I Don't Hate Mondays
by Ground Control
Summary: History is written by the victors. That doesn't mean that it's true. This is what maybe happened and what maybe didn't. Memories can fail. Records can be wrong. Nothing can be real, because no one knows what reality is anymore. The only thing that's certain is that nothing is set in stone. Not even the past.
1. Prologue: Holocene

I Don't Hate Mondays

"_And he can see no reasons, 'cause there are no reasons. What reason do you need to die?"_

_-The Boomtown Rats, 'I Don't Like Mondays'_

**PROLOGUE: I Was Not Magnificent**

-O-0-o-0-O-

"_Some way, baby, it's part of me; apart from me. Now you're laying waste to Halloween. You fucked it, friend; it's on its head, it struck the street."_

_-Bon Iver, 'Holocene'_

-O-0-o-0-O-

Dear Journal. _It's me again. You know. Tate._

Please allow me to introduce myself. _How do you do? I'm not fine, and you?_

I'm the guy who's going to take your white-washed picket fence and burn it to the ground with words. _And watch it smolder while I dance barefoot in the embers._

I wonder what it would be like to still feel alive. But only halfway there. _Like some sick sort of corpse with a heartbeat. But at the end of the day, isn't that all we are?_

Like a heroin junkie, climbing the stairway to heaven while tar and the human shit they water it down with race through their veins as it makes their hearts shrivel up like a dick in cold water. _Puny. It's kind of really sad. _

With their hungry empty eyes, rimmed in eyeliner; shade 'Insomniac: Two Weeks and Counting' and sunken into their skulls. They scream 'moremoremoremoremore' as their cracked and bleeding lips not three inches down remain sealed shut. _Because for some people, obsession just isn't enough. What a sick, dirty goddamn world._

Their rusted silver needles shoot for the Moon and make them see stars. _Blooming in whiteandgoldandsilver flowers behind my-their eyelids. _

Sometimes I think of what it would be like to shoot the Moon._ It would be a BANG! Ha! Hahahahaa._

I like to imagine I could blow its brains out too. See them painted on the debris left to float in space by people whose fifteen minutes of fame have come and gone, since the Moon doesn't even have walls around it to call its own. _We'll start a foundation dedicated to giving it four plaster separators. Every celebrity will give, because it will be the newest fad in charity. _

Or maybe the chunks would land **splatsplatCRUNCH **to Earth, cooked from the speed before impact. Something might even try to eat it. _"No, Fido, don't eat THAT!"_

Or maybe it could fade away into the dirt like everything else on this god-forsaken planet does. _Maggots. Blowflies. Worms. Crawling; squirming their way through big squelchy clumps of green and black and brown flesh. It smells like ROT._

But I don't know.

How could I?

Only gods would be so arrogant as to think they could do such a thing. _Okay, you've got me. I AM that cocky. I could __**so **__do it. I just… don't have the time._

I know one thing for sure.

I would make the Moon bleed. _Torrents of crimson and scarlet reds dripping through the cosmos and staining the black infinity of space. What a pretty portrait that would paint. _

_-O-0-o-0-O-_

That enough for you yet? Has your mind given into the one irrefutable truth of this life? _Lies make the world go round and round and round and- oh, look. Everyone's dizzy. No wonder they do so many stupid things._

Of course it isn't. It never is.

The truth is a drug. _Marijuana, ecstasy, LSD, cocaine, crystal meth, heroin. TRUTH._

There's never enough. It's seductive in its tangibility; to discover something so free of the taint that consumes us all. _Like those fatasses who line up at buffet after buffet, stuffing their faces with cheap food that's been fried three times in old oil._

It worms its way into the mind like a parasite, eating away at what makes us. _Feel it gnawing away at your soul. Feel it._

It tears the membrane of lies that we wear over our eyes like a mourning veil and lets the voices in… and they whisper…_ WeknowWeknowWeknowWeknowWEKN OW._

They know what you've done. And they use their ugly reality to tear you down until you have nothing. Not even you. You're alone. _We all live and die alone. It's come time for you to admit that._

And you hang there, suspended. _Like a swinging criminal who's had their go at the gallows._

You're high. _Inhale that narcotic. Watch it slip down your throat; through your veins; into your lungs. Become immortal for a few fleeting seconds. Nothing can touch you now. You. Are. Free._

And for once, no matter how much you want to, you can't come down. _**IT WAS ALL A LIE.**_

_**-O-0-o-0-O-**_

Sick.

People think of the common cold. The flu. Strep throat. Pneumonia. _Phlegm coating the inside of the tube you shove food down and breathe out of, dripping straight from your nose, where bacteria goes to die. Coughing it back up in a series of forced chest contractions. Only, you swallow it again. And again. An elevated temperature that means nothing more than contagion. Because you have become your virus. _

People think of disease. Leprosy. Meningitis. The Black Plague. _Fleas, the messengers of pestilence, cavorting with the vermin who live in the dark holes of filth and bathe in the putrefied waste no one dares to clean. Migrating; moving, always moving. A human host. Now, the flea is contagious too. Regurgitating the infected dead blood of the rat into the bloodstream of the victim. A lamb in a slaughterhouse. Boils. Glands blocked by a torrent of stinking pus and cloudy blood. Red, red tinged cheeks. Dead limbs. Skin decaying. A rattling as they draw their final breaths and pray that they don't get buried alive. __**Ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posies; ashes, ashes, we all FALL DOWN.**_

I think of me.

-O-0-o-0-O-

I'm a certified sociopath. _I don't feel. Leave me be. Leave me to hate. _

I don't feel empathy. I just don't give a damn about most people. I used to care. _Once upon a time, long, long ago in a land far, far away._

But they kept getting taken away from me. _So I'll start taking them away from others. _

I'm a certified psychopath. _Don't believe a word I say. No- believe me. You need to believe me. Because I don't regret a goddamn thing I've ever done. I do not feel remorse. _

I revel in the crap most fear. _I am the urban legend you hear about at one in the morning at suburban slumber parties._

I do what I feel. _And I never feel nice._

I'm certifiably insane. _Crazy, cuckoo, whacked, schizo, psycho, mad, bonkers, cracked. _

'It's all in your head' they said. 'It's not real, so suck it up and move on with your life, you spoiled little bastard.' _Said. SAID. _

But I am your boogeyman. _I'm hiding under your bed. In the closet. Behind the door. _

I hide in the shadows in every nook and cranny. I watch you sleep and slip into your nightmares to see you scream. _Louder! Louder, dammit! You're not scared enough yet!_

'It's all in your head.'

_Shut up!_

It's real. And that's why I'm the scariest thing of all. _Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf-Man have nothing on me._

You can pretend. _Lalalalalaa, you're not reaaaaal…_

You can smile and laugh to brush it off. _It's all in your head. _

You can convince yourself that this isn't happening. _Nothing's there._

But say that even if it IS in your head, you're stuck here. _With me._

You can't get out. Either way, it's real to you.

-O-0-o-0-O-

I am king of my sad little world. _Welcome to my existence. Population: me._

I rule with an iron fist on my throne of forgotten dreams over the city around me. _LA always was so very… boring. _

The city of angels has fallen.

No wonder Constance calls me 'her angel. 'Her perfect boy'. _I'm not perfect. I don't want to be anything she tells me I am. Ever._

I was the Lucifer of my kingdom. First to fall. _Last to hit rock bottom._

Because I lived too hard. I felt to intensely. _Everything was too real. And reality feels like shit. Dog shit. All squashy and smelly._

Hell is other people. _Faceless strangers in a crowd. I'm always the one who does the shoving. I never get shoved._

And who is more of a stranger to you than yourself? _I like to look in the mirror. I don't know the person who winks back at me. I call him 'Alien'._

I mean, I'm a narcissistic charismatic psychopath with mommy issues and even I don't trust myself most days. _Conversations with myself go a little something like this: 'That shirt looks great on you.' No it doesn't. 'Sure it does.' I look like a hobo. 'Good.'_

I am my own eternal suffering. _I hate me. Or do I?_

That's why people die so quickly. _You know what they say. Live fast, die young and make a pretty corpse. _

The human body was designed to last 190 years. The average life expectancy for most Americans is 78 years. _Actually, that seems like too long, judging by what I've seen what people are like. Maybe we deserve to go so fast._

People can't live with themselves.

They destroy themselves from inside out with brand names, hope and mass-produced lifestyles. _Live the McDonald's experience. Become Starbucks. Buy, buy, buy._

_-O-0-o-0-O-_

I don't wish I was any different. _I can't live with me either. _

I'm a martyr; the unsung prisoner of society's grimy claws. _Okay, maybe I'm no Jeanne D'Arc, but I matter. I think. _

And I remind myself of that every time I pull out the woman who spawned this Satan's credit card, a dollar bill and my little white tablets.

With the piece of plastic that purchases nothingness from department stores, I crush my childhood wishes into a snowy pixie dust and pray to whatever god left me on this giant floating ball of dirt that it helps me fly away with Peter Pan. _I take a heavy snort of youth. Two. Three. Four. FivesixsevenI'velostcountnowbutitdoesn'tmatteranymore. _

I never wanted to grow up. It made Nora sad. _She cried tears to forget that I couldn't replace what she had lost anymore. _

My pure white powdery snow lets me go free. _I wish we had winter in California. _

Like a bird. _Tweet tweet._

I always liked birds.

-0-

The high won't hit me for another few minutes. I'll have time to finish these last few sentences. _Before my world goes all magical and numb and fuzzy and perfect for me. _

Maybe, for just the slightest moment in time, I can leave this place.

-0-

Tomorrow, it ends.

-O-o-O-

_(From the personal journal of Tate Langdon, January 30__th__ 1994)_

_0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o 0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0_

**_Okay, I'm going to be blunt. I feel the need to hear back from readers before I decide to continue a story._**

**_I'm not going to demand reviews. But I do need to know if people like this so far. _**

**_And yes, it will be Violate (my current obsession because I have no life and finished season 1 in two days Dx), but it will be slightly different from the cannon storyline. _**

**_In what way? _**

**_That's to come in good time, so long as you inform me that this story is worth finishing ;)_**

**_And so, I bid you farewell for now, my lovelies. I hope to be able to post another chapter in the near future (notsosubtlehinthint)._**

**_Merida, out._**

**_0o0o0o_**

**_Edit: Thanks to Sarah V for the advice. I hope this helped to clear up some of the confusion any of you could have had. I plan on posting a new chapter soon, and thank you for the feedback :)_**


	2. Chapter 1: How Soon Is Now?

I Don't Hate Mondays

_**Forgot this one the first time around (pleasepleaseplease don't sue me, Mr. Brad Falchuk, sir!) D:**_

_**I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING THAT YOU RECOGNIZE. Any lines from the show are my best attempt at remembering what was said in the few scenes I actually used. I refuse to directly copy the words unless if it is completely necessary. So if they are (or even if they aren't) right, I especially don't own them. Or the characters. Or the whole concept/universe-thing. **_

_**That should conclude the disclaimer. On with the Violate!**_

_**-o-o-o-o-**_

**CHAPTER 1: A Shyness That Is Criminally Vulgar**

-O-0-o-0-O-

"_You shut your mouth, how can you say I go about things the wrong way? I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does."_

_-The Smiths, 'How Soon Is Now?'_

-O-0-o-0-O-

Violet needed a cigarette.

Being crammed in a small vehicle with a dog that smells like ass, a mother who recently suffered a rather brutally traumatizing miscarriage and a father who had been caught red-handed laying pipe with his barely-legal student wasn't exactly relaxing. It actually kind of verged on psychotic breakdown material. The nicotine helped. A bit.

Honestly, at this point, she needed anything she could get. She was kind of sadly desperate for something- _anything_ short of illegal.

So when the cheating bastard that called himself "Dad" (coughassholecough) made a crack at her habit, she snapped back some crap about needing to use the bathroom. It was bullshit. She was just hoping to grab a couple of drags in at any gas station bathroom before she cracked. Who the hell rides for _six hours_ just to go check out a house that they may or may not want to someday live in?

But when he pulled out the 'Sunshine' routine, she responded rudely and resolved to sneak a rig while they toured the McMansion.

_Just two more hours. _

_Oh God, kill me now._

-O-0-o-0-O-

The real estate agent was a blatant racist, homophobic, visibly anxious and, worst of all, a bad joker. As in so bad, you laugh out of pity.

"_What did the frog drink? Croaka-Cola!"_

Ha, ha, Marie. No, Mara? Violet had already forgotten the nosy woman's name.

Thankfully, the house was kind of not too bad. Weirdly beautiful. She almost regretted the tiny itsy-bitsy shot she had taken at it before. Besides, she _liked_ the Addams Family.

But the woman in that god-awful cheap skirt-suit was too much.

She slipped outside, hoping to escape the slew of crappy 'knock-knock' jokes to come. The garden was nice. That much she could see. So she pulled herself up to sit on a low brick wall.

Her cigarette case shined silver in the sunlight when she pulled it out of her cardigan's pocket. You almost couldn't see the doodles of '_Morrissey is the king' _or _'cancer can suck it'._

She sighed heavily as she shook one out, placing it carelessly between her lips in a long-practiced motion. Her fingers searched her pockets for her lighter, a book of matches, a flint stone, anything. An old gum wrapper. A balled-up Kleenex she hadn't used yet. Lint.

"Fuck me", she grumbled, realizing six hours and twenty-four minutes too late that she'd forgotten her Zippo in her frustrated departure from Boston. Now, she would have absolutely nothing to lower the rising tide of irritation and ire. _Freaking Mandy and her stupid puns._

"I'd be glad to, but I thought I'd just offer you a light first", an amused voice commented. Violet had to stifle her yelp of surprise when its owner stepped out from behind of one of those brick-column-things. "Besides, don't you usually save smoking for _after_?"

She should've blushed, but her pride couldn't allow that, now could it?

"Here." He held out a flame fed by combustible liquid dancing on a metal fixture.

"Um, thanks?" she leaned in and touched the tip of her cigarette to it, sucking in a deep lungful of that heavenly nicotine-laden smoke.

He shrugged as it he didn't know what she was thanking him so hesitatingly for. "No problem." He flicked it shut and tucked it back into the pocket of his torn bargain-bin jeans. He was dressed like every other grunge kid in the world who modeled themselves after the man known as 'Cobain'.

The sun made his messy blond hair even brighter. Violet was certain that it came straight from a pharmacy store bottle. So he was vain.

Violet Harmon was smart. She could tell when someone was lying.

Everything about this boy was deliberate; crafted delicately in order to receive a very specific opinion and judgment. He knew exactly which boxes to check in order to appear just the right mix of carelessly good-looking and charismatically dangerous. But the challenge to peel away the layer of false social requirements and niceties was just too enticing. She had to see more.

"You live around here?"

Her lame attempt at conversation disappointed her. Why wasn't her usual sarcastic brand of humor speaking for her as it always did in these awkward situations where she didn't know where to stand?

"I used to live here." _Truth. _

"So you're the one moving?"

Puff, puff. Like the magic dragon. The smoke helped to settle her raging thoughts and direct her attention more entirely on the boy.

"Nah. I haven't lived here in a while." _Truth._

Things got even more interesting fast.

"What's your name?" His voice cut through the shroud of haze she'd blown out of her mouth. His eyes were dark. So dark.

She felt her mouth go dry. "Violet."

The darkness twinkled back at her.

She'd gotten it right. This outer image was nothing more than an illusion. But those dark, dark eyes drew her in. She was the moth to his flame. She knew she would burn. It was inevitable. It was already happening. Even then, she knew that there was no way she could even attempt to stay away from him. She blamed it on her curiosity, that nasty bugger. _Lie._

"Well, _Violet_", his voice seemed to linger on her name. "I'm Tate."

There was a moment of silence that followed. Violet declared it uncomfortable in her mind. She _had _to continue the conversation. She _had _to know more.

"Every time there's an awkward silence, a gay baby is born", she blurted, regretting her lack of filter of witty response immediately.

But Tate did something incredibly unexpected. He began to laugh. It reminded her of coffee. _Bitter. Rich. Sweet. Contradictory. DARK._

"So I take it that you know about the reason why this house is for sale." She shook her head, taking another drag. No, she didn't know.

He chuckled. "A gay couple used to live here. They wanted a baby."

The giggles (like a little girl, so stupid! So stupid!) came trickling down like rain. She couldn't help it. The irony was just too much.

"But they fought a lot", Tate continued. "It didn't end well at all. Murder-suicide."

Violet stopped giggling. The taste of smoke grew sour in her mouth. She crushed her cigarette on the brick and turned her face to look up at the god-forsakenly eternally sunny sky.

She'd understood the implications of death long before most children.

Vivien had explained it so factually while Ben provided blunt observations when she was four.

It had been her first brush with the end of life that had instigated this to-the-point presentation of the facts. In fact, she was fairly certain that she vaguely remembered a PowerPoint in there somewhere, between the _it's okay, sweetie_s and the _it's only a part of living_s.

Violet had been spending quality time with Nana Harmon when she suddenly dropped headfirst into the unbaked cookie dough courtesy of an aneurysm. She didn't even realize that her grandma wasn't just sleeping until she tried to shake her awake to turn on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. An hour later.

Now, as she recalled those early memories of ignorance, she felt a very acute need to place her head between her palms and shake it until she couldn't remember. Maybe if she forgot, it would be like it never happened. _Yeah. Fat chance_.

And then there was Morticia, her first goldfish.

Violet had known the instant Mrs. Addams was floating belly-side up in her plastic bowl that her pet was no longer among the living. Without even bothering to tell her parents, she held a short funeral for her pet in the bathroom before she flushed the toilet, sending Morticia to her watery grave. She'd read passages from Dr. Seuss' 'One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish'. It was beautiful.

When Ben discovered the empty plastic bowl, he spent the next five weeks psychoanalyzing his daughter and praying _'Oh God, please God, don't let my baby girl be some kind of sociopath'._ Selfish ignorant prick.

Violet was strong. She adjusted quickly, if not through rather extreme measures. No wonder her parents were sure that she would survive her last two years of high school in a completely foreign environment. _I wish._

Shaking away her thoughts, she returned her attention to the boy whose face was not his.

_I will not think about it. I won't. Not now._

Instead, she let the fingers of her right hand skim their way up her left sleeve by five inches and press into the skin there. It stung.

"Where did they die?"

The question surprised her as it leapt from her lips but was expected at the same time.

A slow grin crept up onto his face, drowning the purple circles under his eyes in amusement. He looked almost happy. _Truth? Lie?_

"The basement."

Violet frowned. She hadn't seen it yet. In fact, she'd left the second the cookie-cutter realtor (_Marsha? Macy?_) mentioned 'Tiffany fixtures'. Stupid bourgeois designer shit.

Tate's grin only widened. "So you haven't seen it yet." Was she that transparent?

Apparently, or else he wouldn't have grabbed her wrist. She winced. _Ow._

He pretended he didn't notice. "Let's go. I've got something to show you."

-O-0-o-0-O-

They tried to keep as quiet as possible as they crept into the house, avoiding the creaking floorboards that Tate pointed out. Ben wouldn't want her spending time alone with anything with a dick. _Hypocrite._

Especially if said 'anything' was a total stranger (well, she _did_ know his name) and moderately slightly (_very_) attractive.

They reached a door.

He nodded and she reached out with caution to open it. The doorknob was ice-cold under her sweaty palm. Her grip tightened and she twisted. Twisted. Twisted.

"What the hell?" she muttered, trying again, applying more force this time and rattling the frame.

"Stop, you're making noise" Tate whispered. "Let me get it open."

Bastard got it on his first try.

"Oh, shut up", she hissed, shooting his smug grin a glare.

The air of the basement was chilly and stale. It weighed on Violet like those lead gowns they make you wear during X-rays. _Smells like mothballs._

She could feel something watching her- seeing right through her. Tate.

They were already at the bottom of the stairs. And he saw her

Violet couldn't see him.

His voice cut through the empty room. "I'd tell you're doing it wrong. To cut vertically. They can't stitch that up."

His fingers, cool on her scars, stroked her wrist delicately. "But you're not trying to kill yourself, are you?"

The shake of her head was slight. _How did he-? What? I- I… HOW?_

"You just need to remind yourself that you're the one who decides if you make it or not. It's all about having a bit of control over _something_ in your life, right?"

She searched his eyes for everything she was afraid to find. _Fear. Disgust. Judgment._

And she found them. And it hurt so much worse than it should have. But they were just little minnows in a huge lake of complexity. There was more. So much more.

Understanding. A tinge of regret. Curiosity.

Maybe she was crazy for thinking it, but if he understood, where was the sympathy?

Of course, he could be a total psychopath, but the intelligent Violet Harmon would've picked up on that. She would've noticed it right away. _Right?_

And then, as if the metaphorical Thomas Edison in his head invented a light bulb just so that it could brighten at that moment over his head, Tate's once-blank face lit up to one of sudden realization. He looked as though he'd reached enlightenment and nirvana all at once in his new revelation.

It made her want to burst out laughing and crying all at the same time. Was that odd?

"Violet", he whispered. His voice shook with… was that possibly anticipation she detected? "Violet, you're perfect."

She couldn't speak. The words that had once danced so easily on her silver tongue had left her alone in Wonderland with a Cheshire Cat. _Am I dreaming? Maybe I should pinch myself…_

"Sunshine! Come up!"

Of course. Ben just _had_ to ruin the moment. _Jackass._

Tate's joyous mood seemed to wither until his once-eager expression twisted into a dark scowl.

"I-I'm sorry." She stumbled over apology. "I have to go."

He exhaled loudly. "Fine then."

_Whoa. His eyes make him look like he wants to hit something right now._

The hand that had clutched her wrist pulled it upwards. It was a rough and indelicate gesture. Her scars prickled as he lifted her arm higher and higher. He stopped when her curled fingers were just short of brushing his jaw. His grip was almost strong enough to cut off her circulation. Violet was certain that her skin would be painted the color of her namesake with fingerprints in the morning. _And I'm sitting here like some frozen vegetable and letting it happen. _

_Okay._

Tate slowly bowed his head until his mouth hovered over her wrist.

"See you soon… _Violet._"

His lips burned a kiss into the bottled emotions she'd tattooed onto her body with the edge of a blade.

She forgot to breathe.

His long fingers, rough and cool, let her arm drop. He turned on his heel and retreated into another room hidden further into the shadows of the murder-suicide basement.

The regular mix of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide returned to her lungs as he vanished.

"You too, Tate."

-O-0-o-0-O-

"I'm afraid I must disclose any of the… incidents having happened in the past three years", Martha-Margaret-Marjory said, wincing at every word.

"What, did someone die in here or something?" Vivien's tone was joking. She probably believed that the foundation was in need of work, or maybe that the pipes needed replacing.

Violet scoffed. Her mother was so naively optimistic sometimes.

Molly (Morgan?) grimaced visibly. "Actually, yes. Murder-suicide."

"O-oh." Vivien sounded genuinely shocked. Her mouth hung open and her eyes bugged. _Silly tree-hugger. Who's green and unknowing of the ways of the world now?_

Usually Violet respected her mother more (even in her thoughts), but Ben was a bitch, Malory reminded her of a particularly yappy Pomeranian and her wrist still tingled. _And it's sore. Ouch._

Her father and Madeline continued on about some irrelevant crap about pricing and square footage on some other house.

"Where did-?" Vivien didn't seem to be able to even bring herself to finish her inquiry. She looked like she felt guilty for even daring to ask.

"It happened in the basement", Mindy admitted in a tight voice, fidgeting.

A slow smile grew on Violet's face as she touched the scars Tate had kissed.

"We'll take it."

-O-0-o-0-O-

_**Chapter one is up (thank god)!**_

_**Well, I hope that you all enjoyed this one. Keep in mind, this story does deviate from the original storyline. Too bad I'm a horrible person and refuse to give too much away :3**_

_**Any feedback on how to improve is always appreciated (but keep it tasteful, people! No flames!) and I hope to receive more and work towards bettering my writing.**_

_**Thanks for reading!**_

_**Merida**_


	3. Chapter 2: Ava Adore

I Don't Hate Mondays

**_I own nothing. And even if I did, there is no way that I could make the show even close to what it is now. I bow to you, Falchuk and Murphy, gods of television._**

-O-0-o-0-O-

**Chapter 2: Lovely Girl, You're the Murder in my World**

-O-0-o-0-O-

"_Lovely girl, you're the beauty in my world, without you there aren't any reasons left to find…"_

_-Smashing Pumpkins, 'Ava Adore'_

-O-0-o-0-O-

Tate felt… bored.

Leading Dr Harmon in circles was just as easy as manipulating any other poor fucker in the world.

It was just too bad that that cocksucking bitch he called 'Constance' (not mom_- never_ mom) had called up Sigmund Freud here and scheduled an hour of the same shit he'd dealt with for years.

Apparently, psychiatrists dealing with patients with a history of violent behavior now _required_ they attend sessions or else they called the cops. Something about 'being a danger to others as well as to themselves'. So that was new.

"Look, Tate. I know you don't want to open up to some guy you met half an hour ago, but at least try. You need to give me _something _to go on", 'Siggy' pleaded.

_Wow. That sounded almost half-genuine, Doc. _

How ironic it was to him that the people 'treating' him were just as removed from feeling emotion towards others as he was. They were just pickier about who they didn't include in their little circle of feelings.

He decided to humor the dear old doc. Just a bit.

Who knew? Maybe if he told the truth for once, he'd succeed in scaring him away and get off scot-free. Or he might get wrapped up in a pretty white jacket like a present and taken away by men with a thing for beating people with sticks to go live in a nice, quiet padded cell. And the gig would be up, they'd figure out that he wasn't real and he wouldn't have to go to share his feelings with the nice man with a _stupid fucking boy band haircut_ anymore.

Either way, he won.

So he talked.

"I prepare for the war", Tate began, keeping his expression carefully blank. "I know that it isn't noble. It's far from that. It's _messy._"

He practically spat the last word from his mouth in disgust. _Of what, psycho? Yourself?_

"I'd like to think that I'm calm. But I know that I can't keep my hands from shaking when I look at them. How the hell am I supposed to aim a gun when I can't even hold it properly?"

Ben took a moment to write something down in his notebook. Tate copied his wrist movements, drawing the observations his new shrink had jotted down on his exposed knee. _Take that, Constance. Holes in jeans are good for something._

'Fantasizes about school shooting', Harmon had written. 'Dangerous?'

The question mark felt heavy. Even so, Tate continued.

"I end up killing the people I like. I don't even know them. I don't talk to anyone at school if I don't have to. So I sort of pick them out because they aren't complete dicks. They just seem like good people from what I've seen of them so far. The sad part is that it seems so easy to me while I'm doing it. Like rocking a baby to sleep."

_I would've done it. Oh god. I actually would've done. _

_Should it bother me more than it does? It should. _

"Some of them beg for their lives. They're crying and snot is running from their noses. It's like they're toddlers with scraped knees all over again. _That's_ the real messy part. Not what the bullets do. Their last words don't even make sense. Most of them are lying when they tell me they believe in God."

He didn't believe in God. Because he knows better. He's seen that bright light at the end of the tunnel. And he knows that there is no God.

His sick fantasy (_could've been a reality, psycho)_ makes him want to laugh. And puke. And then laugh some more.

"I don't feel sad. I don't feel anything. It's like someone's locked me away, and I'm just an outsider looking in."

Okay, maybe he was laying it on a little thick. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was in complete control.

"It's a filthy world we live in." _Okay, psycho. That's enough. Shut your mouth, pretend to keep your head down and take your meds. Siggy's had enough now._

"A filthy goddamn helpless world. There's nothing we can do about it. That's the worst part." _Seriously. Time to go back to telling the doc fairy tales about other crazies now. Shut up._

He couldn't help himself. It was as if Harmon had slipped a verbal laxative in with his demand for real information. He knew he should stop.

"And honestly, it feels like when I kill them, I'm taking all of that good away from the _shit_ and the _piss_ and _vomit _that run in the streets. I'm making this filthy world an even worse place to be. And I'm watching all turn to shit." _Great. So you're back to being a pottymouth so you can seem like you're more insane than you are. Good job, psycho. Tell the man with the power to make them shove you in a room with padded walls forever more about how you planned to murder fifteen kids in cold blood._

"I'm helping to take them somewhere clean. And kind. Somewhere that deserves them and all the good they can do. Because god knows that we don't deserve it."

Harmon's face twitched before he asked his next question. "Why do you think that we don't deserve good people, Tate?"

The doc had included himself in the statement. _Good. Because I can already tell that you aren't a good person._

"We've twisted the world into a horror show. Filthy. We're all the monsters. That's why they tell little kids all those fairy tales about the big bad wolf and the wicked witch. They know that we're out there."

Tate thought of the kids in the house. It made him want to laugh. Thaddeus was a sick infant version of Frankenstein's monster. And the twins. Like little devils. There was no way that they got _that _little moral message before they died.

"There's so much pain. That's why growing up hurts. It's like you know that one day, you're going to be the thing you were so scared of as a kid."

'Talks about children and childhood more than usual. Discuss.' The pen continued to scratch away.

He ignored the last note that had been jotted down and continued down the path he'd already set himself on.

"There's something about the blood. I drown in it. I can feel it filling up my lungs until pulls me down. It feels like I'm choking on air- like I'm breathing blood."

'Psychotic', Harmon finally seemed to decide. 'Medication.'

Tate wanted to scream.

Something- anything to change this stinking routine. It just happened over and over and over and freaking over again. Same story. Every. Damn. Time.

"The Indians used to cut themselves every month in ceremonies to let the spirits out. That's smart. I like that. The idea that you being a monster isn't your fault. That it's your parents' fault. That it's _their_ blood's fault."

His tone was flat. _Take that, cocksucker._

"Do you want to talk about what happened with your father?"

_Oh god. The shrink sounds like he's about to piss himself with excitement. Yeah. You brought up the taboo little elephant in the room and I didn't rip your head off. Whoop-dee-doo. Fucking great._

"You know, he ditched me when I was six. Packed up and left. Didn't even bother to say goodbye or offer to take me with him. Would've been better than what he did."

"And what was that, Tate?"

_Take it easy, Siggy. You might just crap your pants if you don't slow down._

"He left me with my whore of a mother." Tate smirked. It felt good to associate curse words with Constance. Helped to relieve the tension building in his brain whenever he mentioned the bitch.

Otherwise he would need to hit something. Break something. To take something perfect and watch it smashing into a thousand fucking perfect tiny pieces.

_God, will he just get over with already?_

Tate realized how often he said the word 'god' for an atheist.

Fucking repetition. It was like 'Groundhog Day'. _Except no sex or Bill Murray. So in summary, a huge bummer._

"She used to screw the neighbor, you know. Until he got caught on fifty to life. Torched his entire family. Wife and two little daughters. He was a real prick."

"Maybe they're why I'm so screwed up", he mused, smirking. "It'd be nice to blame someone else for once."

"Do you really believe that?" the doc inquired. He'd put down his pen. Finally.

"Nope." Tate popped the 'P' in the word. He smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. "I know that I can't change what I am. I've spent days on end tearing my hair out over it. But I know that I'm a monster. And that's fine by me."

Harmon paled. "Tate, I believe that no one is untreatable. With the right combination of medication and therapy-"

Tate cut him off with a single look.

"Whatever you think Doc." He glanced at the clock. "But I know that there's one thing about me that isn't so bad."

"And what would that be?" Siggy's voice tried to disguise uncertainty and shakiness behind good ol' sterile cold professionalism.

_Bad move._

Tate could smell lies better than a shark could smell blood.

He leaned forwards. His grin widened.

"I could have been so, so much worse."

Silence.

"I believe that's all our time for today, doc. See you next time."

-O-0-o-0-O-

The smoke made the bitch's eyes water.

"Don't you fucking get it, you freak? No smoking on school property!"

Fucking valley girls. And 'Leah' was the pushiest, most manipulative egotistical one of them all.

Violet had had more than her fair share of encounters with the school bitch squads. Maybe they didn't like her hair.

She snorted, both at the thought and at the Supreme Queen. Firstly because she knew all too well that they just didn't _do_ different and felt the need to stomp out individuality. Secondly because it got more smoke in the whore's face. _Hah. Hope you get cancer, tramp._

Just a minute earlier, she'd been peacefully walking along, glaring at everyone she passed. _School fucking sucks. _

And the next thing she knew, this bitch and her posse had her surrounded and she was listening to a high-pitched voice ramble on about school rules.

_I don't have time for this bullshit._

"You understand? Never smoke here again!"

Violet scowled, dropped her rig and squished it beneath her shoe. She could feel the heat through the sole of her chucks. "Got it."

She didn't have time for this. She needed to get home and scream into a pillow before she broke her hand hitting this bitch's face. Besides, Vivien promised to order Chinese.

_Okay. Deep breaths. In. out. In. out. Just think of the mu shu pork. Noodles. Stay calm, Violet._

The bitch looked ready to do something crazier than having some guy do coke off of her nipples. Besides, she'd already done that. Violet had overheard her gossiping to her friends about it like some twelve year-old who just got their first training bra.

So she put her head down, looked regretful, anything, _anything_ for this crackhead to go the hell away and leave her to sulk in peace.

She thought back to the one positive (if she could even really call it that because it was more weird than anything else) recollection she had of this place. _Tate._

Maybe if she didn't have that one good memory of this shithole, she'd have done something to Leah. Like spit in her face. Or burn her with her cigarette.

But she did. So she didn't.

_Mu shu pork, Vi. Mu shu pork._

-O-0-o-0-O-

Tate felt satisfied.

He'd succeeded in at least shaking up the wallet munching quack in there.

All in a day's work.

The smug smirk of victory stayed plastered to his face as he strolled down the hallway, tucking his hands in his pockets. _Huh. Didn't realize I'd left my lighter in there. _

He fingered the warm metal, humming the tune to 'Wave of Mutilation' by The Pixies.

The carpet was uglier than he remembered. And it was pretty bad before from what he recalled. _Fucking Patrick and Chad._

_Tink._

The unmistakable sound of metal hitting porcelain rang from behind the bathroom door. It was ajar. And Tate knew exactly who was inside.

_I put the shrink with the ego the size of Constance's hair in his place, didn't strangle him in the process, and now this. Can this day get any better?_

Next thing he knew- "Hey"- he was leaning against the door frame and waving hello to Violet.

She looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Only paler. And perfect. _Perfect._

"So…" his voice trailed off as he looked down at her bloodied wrists and back up at her face again.

She stared, mouth open as if she wanted to say something but the words kept slipping back down her throat.

"You're bleeding and I'm crazy. What's with that?"

-O-0-o-0-O-

**_Oookay, so that wraps this chapter up. As you can see, getting through each episode is gonna take time because I don't have the gift of being able to limit and condense my words all while still making sense and sounding interesting. To those of you that have this talent, I am so so very jelly. Grape jelly. _**

**_Also, a great big thank you to the wonderful people who have been so kind as to favorite this story or add it to their alerts :D_**

**_The rest of you still get a thank you. It's just not as big. Sorry :P_**

**_That's it for now. Carry on now. _**

**_(My wayward son.)_**

**_Couldn't help myself. So sorry._**

**_..._**

**_No. I'm not sorry._**

**_-Merida_**


	4. Chapter 3: Violet Hill

I Don't Hate Mondays

_**Oh great creators of all that is beautifully macabre about this show, I implore you to spare me and my measly fanfiction. I am not worthy of smiting. Please do not believe that I have the rights to any of this. I only beg that out of the goodness of your benevolent hearts, you will allow this minor tale to be posted upon this website.**_

-O-0-o-0-O-

**CHAPTER 3: Bury Me in Armor When I'm Dead and Hit the Ground**

-O-0-o-0-O-

"_I took my love down to Violet Hill. There we sat in snow; all that time she was silent, still. Said, 'if you love me, won't you let me know?'"_

_-Coldplay, 'Violet Hill'_

-O-0-o-0-O-

"I like your jar. Very morbid." He tapped on the glass that separated his finger from a baby doll's head submerged in liquid. Tate was willing to bet it was just colored water.

Violet nodded absently, scrolling through the long list of songs that she had on her iPod. She felt as if every move she made could completely alter his opinion and attitude towards her. And after how their last encounter ended, she didn't want to take any chances. Who knew? Maybe she'd finally found a kindred soul.

"You know, the guy who built this place used to keep them in jars", he continued. He turned away from the shelf where the jar sat to face her. "He was this mad-scientist type of guy. Crazy ideas. Had the whole Frankenstein thing going."

Violet finally settled on 'Interstate Love Song' by the Stone Temple Pilots. This was bullshit. She couldn't decide whether he wanted to scare her or was just fucking with her to see how she'd react.

"Yeah right." She scoffed with those words. She'd had one too many cheesy séances with Vivien to be rattled by the possibility that her house was the next Bates Motel. Besides, living in a haunted house could be cool. Might give her something interesting to look into in her free time if it really was. Maybe she could stage recreations with her old G.I. Joe action figures and her long-lost Cabbage Patch dolls.

See? Nothing wrong with the way she thought. Not a thing wrong at all. _Suck on that, Ben._

"No, I'm dead serious. He was rich in the 20s until he started huffing anesthetic to keep up with the demand and to get away from his smothering wife. Then things went downhill and next thing you know, he's cutting fetuses out of young women just to keep up with the bills."

"Woah." God, she sounded like a five year-old going to Disney for the first time. She needed to stem the flood of embarrassing moments before Tate decided she was too awkward to spend his time on. _I sound like a tween pop star on TV. Get it the hell together, Vi! It's not even real! Geezus._

"I- as if. There's no way that happened here." _Nice. Stutter some more, why don't you? Maybe he likes his girls with speech impediments._

Tate chuckled. "It did."

He stepped closer, his fingers seeking the wrist that was still tender from not ten minutes ago and latching on. His grip was not unlike that of a leech siphoning blood from an unsuspecting body. He was a bit like that, he figured. Draining the life and sanity from everyone he ever came into contact with.

Violet bit back a wince in an exceptional show of self-control. She knew exactly what he was doing. Poking at her open wounds and searching for a sign of weakness in the barriers she'd erected around her heart. What she didn't know was whether he would use these against her or if he was just curious enough to bother getting to know her.

"Come." His tone held a tiny note of 'please listen to me'. "Sit with me."

They both plopped down on the shag carpet she'd found on the side of the road one day and decided to bring home. He still grasped her arm as if it was a lifeline. It stung.

"He used to practice in the basement."

"Shit." Aaaand she'd reverted right back to the gullible little girl. All because the psycho in the lab coat had just so happened to chop people up in the exact same place where that gay couple had met their gruesome end. Or so the one guy she'd been able to tolerate (and actually kinda really liked) since _ever_ said.

Violet sighed. Okay. She'd play along. But only because she had no idea what else to do. And to be honest, she wanted something new and exciting in her life. If that just so happened to be one of her dad's crazy patients (with an exceptionally beautiful smile) who was into ghost stories (and had really nice hands) and the only teenager who wasn't a total asshole, then so what? _You forgot his eyes. Mm. Those eyes._

"Fine. Say that what you just told me was real. What else happened in this house?" she figured, 'hey, if a whole bunch of unborn babies and 'Elton John and David Furnish' died there, some other shit must've gone down.'

"Well, a lot of people have died violent deaths here, that's for sure", Tate said, his thumb running over her most recent cuts.

She took a deep breath. _Maybe Barbie will get to play Black Dahlia after all._

"The doc's wife lost it after one of their patient's boyfriends freaked and stole their kid, Thaddeus. They got him back the next week. In five different boxes."

His fingers tightened ever so slightly. He continued.

"She shot him and then blew her own brains out after he tried to bring their bouncing baby boy back from the dead."

Tate's tone was flat and factual. Unaffected.

"Then there was a nurse and a sorority girl in the late sixties. The nurse got drowned in the bathtub and the other one got stabbed seventeen times in the back by some passerby serial killer. And then Lorraine Harvey and her two daughters burned to death in the kids' room. The husband went to jail for it."

There was a pause, and an implied 'there are more'.

But Tate remained silent.

Violet decided she needed to fill in. "So this house is probably haunted?"

It was more of a joking remark than an actual question, but Tate responded immediately. "Definitely. And I bet that they all watch you shower."

He smirked and she swatted at him playfully. "Oh please. Just because you would doesn't mean that they would."

"Hey, how do you know that I'm not a ghost too?" he shot back, his smirk growing.

Violet laughed. "Because what kind of ghost would you be if you let me see you properly? You're supposed to hide under a bedsheet with eyeholes and groan at me in the dark. You just straight-up walked over and decided to strike up a conversation with me."

"Well, how's this for an introduction for the ghostly me then?"

He cleared his throat, looking her straight in the eye.

"Hey, I'm Tate. I'm dead. Wanna hook up?"

Violet rolled her eyes. "Come on, Casper. You'll have to do better than that."

"I liked Betelgeuse better. I don't think I'd get along too well with the rest of the ghosts. Or the people living in my house", he mumbled, shooting her a tiny smile. "But not you. You're my Lydia. I like you."

_Oh god. Oh god. Oh whatever the hell is up there or whatever. Please. Don't let this be a dream. _

She could feel herself blushing. Redder than a firetruck. As always. _Curse this pale paleness that makes me look like a tomato every time I feel emotion!_

"Just don't ever tell me to go away."

His voice was quiet. Violet felt as though he was so fragile in that moment, he would've shattered if she not agreed.

"Tate, Tate, Tate", she chanted softly true to the _Beetlejuice_ reference, smiling at him.

The color drained from his face and his mouth hung open as if he was about to scream.

"If that can't make you leave, then there's no sense in ever asking, is there?"

The pale pink returned to his cheeks and the corners of his mouth lifted.

Tate laughed.

-O-0-o-0-O-

"Come on, he'll see us", Tate hissed, waving for Violet to hurry up.

They both crept down the stairs, skipping the step at the bottom because it creaked loudly whenever someone used it.

To be completely honest to himself, Tate had no idea what he was doing. With Violet, the only answer to anything was to think on his feet. She was too unpredictable for any long-term schemes of his to actually work out. So any half-truthful endeavors to get her to fall for him, the sad, sick twisted excuse of the shell of what once was a human being were out. _That's it, psycho. Hate yourself for everything that you wanted to do. That you know you would have done. You don't deserve her, and you know it._

That dark little voice throbbed in his head as it screamed his biggest insecurities and fears. He hated his inner conscience.

"I still don't get why we have to be so scared of my dad finding us", Violet whispered, suddenly closer than he had expected her to be. Her tiny exhales tickled his ear with warm air.

"Because I'm crazy and he knows that." Tate pulled the basement door open inch by inch, praying to a deity that he didn't believe in that the hinge would not squeak loudly as it usually did. And apparently, the god he knew didn't exist had heard his plea. "And besides, he would be scared of letting a girl like you hang around a guy like me."

Violet stopped following, ignoring when he reached out and grabbed her wrist again, attempting to pull her along.

"What do you mean by 'a girl like me'?"

She sounded like she was torn between confused and offended. _Of course she's going to misinterpret your compliment, psycho. Why would she believe you when you imply that she's like nothing you've ever seen before?_

He let out the breath he'd been holding ever since he'd taken a hold of her arm.

"You're different Violet. You're special", he answered, turning back to the stairs and taking the first step down. Again, she stayed in place, as if frozen.

Tate might have believed that time had stopped if not for the changing look of disappointment on her face.

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

She had all but forgotten his vulnerability from moments before. She had taken up the demeanor of a doctor; find the sore spot and push until it hurts.

_I told you so. I told you so. I told you so. I told you so. I told you so. I told you so. I told you so._

Digging his nails into his palm, he gritted his teeth and prepared to vomit the truth for her pretty eyes to feast on.

"It means that I really like you, Violet. And I don't like many people."

The fear vanished from her features, replaced with a radiant smile that made him want to smile right along with her.

He stepped back up to stand not six inches from where she had paused. His fingers brushed at her hair, pushing the strands that hung in her face over her ear. "Don't hide. I like seeing you."

Her almost imperceptible gasp made his stomach clench.

It was then that he knew for sure. That the red tingeing her pale cheeks, the dilated pupils, her racing heart… it was all for him.

She was his, and she didn't even know it yet. _Perfect._

Violet slowly shuffled closer until the toes of her converse met his.

"You're so beautiful…" he whispered.

Tate bowed his head. Violet raised hers.

The moment when their lips touched was like nothing he could have ever predicted.

It wasn't the sensation of fireworks like described in so many of the bodice rippers that he had snuck away from Constance out of pure curiosity at the young age of ten. It wasn't like a delicate trembling embrace either.

It was a fire; out of control, burning hot and a blur of beauty. It was a tangled mess of lips, teeth and tongue.

It was like her.

And it did the impossible, just like the girl who had somehow defied the odds and caught his eye for all of the right reasons. It made him feel _alive._

Reluctantly, he withdrew, remembering the need for oxygen that she still retained, savoring the traces of smoke from the cigarette he knew she'd snuck and the mint gum that she'd chewed afterwards to cover up the smell.

His lips tingled.

"Now come on, I have something important to show you."

He reached out an open hand, and she took it and allowed him to lead her into the basement. Her hand was tiny and warm in his. _All it would take for you to crush those delicate little fingers is twelve pounds of pressure. Think on that for a bit, psycho._

He shook his head to rid it of the darkness. But it lingered there, hidden away behind the guilt and regret that he'd buried for the past seventeen years.

_Goddamnit! I just did something good for once, and already have to deal with this shit. Can't I have just one freaking minute of peace?_

_No. you can't._

Biting his lip, he continued downwards.

They descended into the dark and damp basement. Violet shivered.

"You said that there aren't any ghosts in this house, right? That my story couldn't possibly be true?"

His voice deepened. He turned to look at her.

"I'm going to prove you wrong."

Squatting down, Tate reached into his pocket and retrieved the red ball that he had taken from the attic in his last visit there.

"You know, not everyone who died here is angry. Not all of them are vindictive. Sure, some are, but not all. There are a few pure souls out here. The ones who deserved better but got shit."

With that, he rolled the ball into the dark corner of the room.

"What the hell are you trying to show me, Tate?"

Violet once again seemed confused. "I thought we'd established that your ghost story wasn't true."

The ball rolled back.

"Hey Thaddeus."

Tate's voice was soft and seemed to echo in the dark of the room. Violet had stopped exclaiming her disbelief.

"No. No, this isn't happening", she started, backing away. "It's not real. It's just one of your friends pretending."

His laugh was chilling. "Do I look like the kind of guy with friends?"

He got up again. "There's nothing living in this room, Violet. Nothing but you."

Her face was bone-white. Her eyes were wide open.

Smiling, his eyes dark and the shadows creeping in, he turned to face her.

"Hey, I'm Tate. I'm dead. Wanna hook up?"

-O-0-o-0-O-

_**Boom.**_

_**The bomb has dropped. Don't worry, there are plenty more. And again, don't worry, this story won't be all sunshine and butterflies. At least not for very long ;)  
**_

_**Shit WILL go down (when, I won't say), and feels will be hurt. And maybe a couple of people will be maimed. But hey, you guys have all watched the show. Of course it's not going to be a leisurely stroll down the yellow brick road. **_

_**Okay, so I won't apologize for the fact that this chapter took longer than the others did. I had a life to lead (hahahaaa... no, I didn't) and a brother to duel in order to receive computer time. **_

_**This week: again, a great big thank you to everyone who read and kept reading. An even bigger thank you to everyone who favorited. And the biggest thank you to vixenXfreezepop for the wonderful reviews. I hope this slightly satisfied your craving for Violate action :D **_

_**All right, that seems to be it for now. **_

_**Bye bye,**_

_**Merida**_


	5. Chapter 4: Diminishing Returns

_**Dear Falchuk and Murphy, you're awesome. Don't you ever quit. That being said, I would appreciate it greatly if I could own American Horror Story. Cause I don't, much to my dismay. But great work, keep it up. **_

_**-O-0-o-0-O-**_

**CHAPTER 4: You're So Tangible, Like a Nitroglycerin Tablet Under my Tongue**

-O-0-o-0-O-

_"__Progress shall be defined by your position on the bridge as it burns. When populism, activism, urbanism fail, my cooler head will prevail. When there are no more gods left to annoy; no more noses to bend out of joint, I will meet you at the point of diminishing returns."_

_-Harvey Danger, 'Diminshing Returns'_

-O-0-o-0-O-

Tate's revelation hung in the air like the stench of last night's Indian food. Heavy with spices of shock and surprise. Nuggets of meaty fear. A side of bland disgust. Like a curry of secrets.

Violet hated spicy food.

Lip trembling and stumbling one, two, three steps back, her face went sheet-white and she let loose a cry not unlike that of a trapped animal.

The tiny measure of hope floating above the madness swimming in Tate's eyes soured and curdled the moment that sound escaped her mouth.

"Violet?" His voice shook like a 6.7 on the Richter Scale.

He had regressed to the state of childlike delicacy that he had adopted in her room. It would only take one word too many to crack the fragile sheen of sanity he'd managed to scrounge up despite the reaction he knew was inevitable.

His body was already tensed for the impact of her rejection. Curled in on itself. Ready to lash out at a second's notice.

"Just… just… just…"

She had become her best-loved and well-worn record; vinyl ground away to dust and floating about the room. Stuck on the same track and skipping with. Every. Single. Beat.

He took a tentative step forwards, reaching out, away from his previous position of surrender.

"Violet?"

_Maybe she isn't like everyone else. Maybe she isn't scared. Maybe she just needs a bit of encouragement. Maybe-_

_That's too many 'maybes' for a 'yes', psycho. Don't kid yourself. Did you really think that she would overlook the fact that she just sucked face with a dead kid? That's like, necrophilia. Ew._

Pushing aside that nagging little voice in the back of his head, Tate took another step towards her.

She took another five back.

The expression on her face told him that that ship had long sailed for better horizons.

"Just stay away from me!"

Her shriek echoed through the empty basement, ringing in her ears.

Scrambling, she turned and sprinted up the uneven stairs, tripping once or twice as her spindly pale legs pumped and strained to get her away.

Spidery fingers with bitten fingernails fumbled with the heavy metal door handle, twisting and pushing until the basement was locked away.

The sound of the door slamming shut felt final to Tate.

Heavy silence. The calm before the disaster.

That was the only way to describe his outbursts. 'Storm' was too tame.

Shelves fell like dominoes under the wrath of his worn tennis shoe. The wooden rocking chair that had once been the sole piece of furniture in the room Thaddeus favored became no more than splinters of wood lodged in his hands, courtesy of the stone wall and his rage.

His energy spent but his emotions still raging, Tate dropped, his knees drawn close and his bloody fingers twining in his hair and pulling, pulling, pulling.

"**I THOUGHT YOU WEREN'T AFRAID OF ANYTHING!**"

He screamed with everything he had left, ignoring the heavy musk of copper and salt rising in his mouth.

But here he was.

Afraid.

-O-0-o-0-O-

He had another session scheduled with Sigmund Freud.

Fucking Constance. The old whore.

Tate hoped she was just as cursed as her womb was.

He was in no mood to speak to the weak-willed and utterly incompetent excuse for a man that had by some miracle sired the wondrous creature that Violet was.

The taste of blood rose in his mouth again, and he restrained the urge to scream her name, to plead for her to take him back, to at least freaking _look_ at him. He was almost certain that she would hear him from Dr Harmon's office.

The temptation grew.

Tate stifled the hope growing in him and shot the quack a dark glare when his phone went off. Siggy mumbled an apology and turned off the stupid contraption.

"Um, if it's okay with you, I'm going to record-"

Tate cut off his clumsy demand with a sharp nod. His scowl would probably make even the old hag he'd once called 'Mama' cringe, he mused to himself all while trying desperately not think of Vi- the girl. The girl.

"Have you been taking your medication?"

The question almost caught him off guard.

Of course he wasn't. He was _dead._ Zyprexa wasn't going to do anything for him now, was it?

Besides, even if by some chance he'd been alive, he would never have taken it. It dulled his senses in a way he didn't appreciate. _Too manufactured. Too permanent. Too mandatory._

Even so, he decided to throw the dog a bone. "Sure."

"Any side effects?"

The question followed his reply immediately, as if Ben Harmon was just as eager to get Tate out of there as Tate was.

_Come on, I need side effects… side effects… what are common side effects?_

"I was taking them at night. They were keeping me up", Tate answered, staring up at the ceiling and counting the cracks as he lounged back in the chair.

"So what did you do?"

_God, doc, you just have a question for everything now, don't ya? Can't we just stick to the usual 'tell me about your issues' and 'how does that make you feel'?_

"Started taking them in the morning."

There. A reasonable solution that any idiot could come up with. Even one whose brain was being shrunk by prescription antipsychotics.

"Light sensitivity is pretty common", Harmon added, seeming to relax back into his usual role of douchebag shrink.

_That's a side effect, right? Oh well, might as well roll with it. _

_Play it safe, psycho._

Great. His Jiminy Cricket was back.

"Maybe", Tate said, his voice lingering a little on the final syllable, as if he wasn't completely certain. "I think so."

Siggy sighed, giving him a skeptical look.

"When I was in medical school", the dear old doc began.

_Fuck this. He's playing storyteller. I'm leaving._

_Pretty lies don't fool me, psycho. Would you really ever pass up the chance to push this guy's buttons?_

_Mm. Nah._

"They brought in this guy from the CIA to show us how to tell if someone was lying, a guy who specialized in interrogation. He was huge, like seven foot a hundred, so he and to be real good at his job. I mean, I wouldn't have the balls to lie to this guy."

The very idea that Harmon had balls in the first place made Tate want to laugh. Scornfully. Right in his face.

But then he registered the words coming out of Freud's mouth. He put two and two together and realized they made four.

Tate stood up suddenly.

"You think I'm lying."

It was a statement. Not a question. That was made very clear.

But Tate couldn't have the doc thinking he was lying. Or else he'd start to question. He'd start to dig. And Tate knew all too well how many bones were buried out in the backyard. In his past.

"Light sensitivity isn't a side effect of Lexaprotate."

Ah. So that's what they were calling it. Tate sat back down again, this time in a rocking chair completely different to the one he'd trashed not days ago.

"So you lied to _me."_ His clenched teeth and bitten tongue were apparent in his words.

_Hypocrite doctor. Trying to trap me. I wasn't even specific in my freaking answer. _

"What's really important is that you're telling the truth about what you're thinking of doing to your classmates."

Oh, so he was going to go with _that_ one. _Nice try doc. I've heard it all before._

"If you're actually a danger to society", Harmon continued. "The law says I have to report you to the police."

Rocking back and forth, hands clasped white-knuckle-tight as if in prayer, he looked up. "Did you call them already?"

Cops meant investigations. Investigations meant the truth. The truth meant V- the girl- _the girl_ would leave.

"Not yet." For a man inches away from being gutted like a pig and strung up like dead meat in a slaughterhouse, the doc was quite calm. It was as if he'd completely forgotten exactly how dangerous this patient could be. Harmon got up and started pacing.

"I've treated psychotics before and know that even with the right combination of medication and treatment, some people have a chemical imbalance and can't be reached." He stopped three feet away from Tate, staring him directly in the eye.

_Ooh, the quack has some semblance of balls after all. Interesting. Maybe he'll finally give up._

"You think that's me? You think I can't get better?"

_Go on. Say it. I've been waiting for you to say it. Hell, I've been hoping you'd say it. Come on._

_Set me free._

"You?" Harmon chuckled.

_God damnit! So close!_

Tate knew exactly what he was about to say next. But it wasn't what he wanted to hear.

"You're hopeless", the doc stated in a teasing voice. He chuckled again.

He probably wanted Tate to laugh with him. He expected he'd be happy that he could be cured.

"You're right, doc. I am hopeless."

Tate smiled, his eyes alight with darkness. "And that gives me hope."

Harmon coughed, trying to shake off the little shiver of fear that had run down his back with those words. "No, Tate. Everyone can get better. You're just scared."

_Damn right I am. Thank your daughter for that one._

"Of what, I'm not sure. Maybe… rejection."

_Bingo, Siggy. Right on the nose. That's Sunshine's work that you're admiring right there._

Tate didn't want to be spiteful towards _that girl_. But he couldn't help the resentment that followed his frustration in her complete refusal of him.

Maybe, if she would just _acknowledge_ him again, it wouldn't hurt so bad. Maybe it'd just hurt a million times worse.

_It's like that thing I call a heart-for better lack of a term- is covered in a billion little paper cuts. I fucking hate those. They sting like a bitch. _

"Maybe because of what your father did to you."

It was then that he noticed her.

Over Harmon's shoulder, he glimpsed that gi- _Violet_ half-hidden in the doorway.

And suddenly, it was as if he had never been renounced by her in the first place. The organ that would be called 'heart' by the men who'd poked around his chest cavity to determine the exact cause of death after he'd finally been declared no longer among the living tightened in the best of ways.

He could feel ever-so-close-but-never-quite human again.

"I was afraid my big dick wouldn't work."

Tate said the words with a smirk and looking right at her. The joke was shared between them without the doc ever having a clue that it was less than pure fact.

"W-what?" Harmon tried to laugh it off, his voice betraying the tiniest of wavers. Tate laughed right along with him.

_Laughing at your own jokes, now, psycho? My, how the mighty have fallen._

"Yeah, that's why I didn't take the meds", Tate continued. Harmon scoffed. "I was afraid my dick wouldn't work."

"Because I met someone."

He stared at Violet.

Violet stared right back.

-O-0-o-0-O-

All of the sudden, it was as if he wasn't dead anymore.

There they were, Sid and Nancy, sitting in her room and comparing battle scars.

"I made this one when I was…" he paused, thinking back. "Ten, I think, when my dad left."

Violet brandished her own arm, where the straight lines of crusted blood were still fresh. His had long faded away, much like the denial he'd been swimming in before he finally accepted his monstrosity of a mind.

"Last week. First day at my new school. Sucks."

_Ooh, I know this one. The whole déjà vu thing. Been there, almost done that. _

"Westfield, right? The worst. I almost got thrown out of there."

She looked at him through her hair. Hiding again.

"Don't do that, Violet", he pleaded softly. "Don't hide from me."

She shook her head, hair scattering like leaves in the wind. "You know, I don't know what to think of you, Tate. You're just so…"

"Go on, say it." His voice was a murmur now, an echo of his thoughts in the doc's office.

"Say it. I won't be mad. It's true."

"Insane", she finished. He smiled.

"But I don't believe you", she added, her tone growing bolder. _There she is. My Violet._

"I'm still your friend though. But anything... else will have to wait until I've made up my mind."

He considered it. "Seems fair enough."

"One thing to consider before you decide what I am", Tate said, his smile wicked and hinting at the darkness that lay beneath the surface. "Us dead people aren't like fairies. If you don't believe in us, we don't vanish."

"We come back, more _real _than ever."

-O-0-o-0-O-

_**Alrighty then. **_

_**Some shit has gone down. Ish. More to come on that front, that's for sure.**_

_**(and I'm still sitting here, counting down the minutes until Season 3 airs)**_

_**Now, on to other business. **_

_**My lovely, lovely readers, as lovely as ever, I bestow one hug upon you all (or a cookie if you're not too keen on sharing personal bubble space).**_

_**The great, marvelous people who have deemed me worthy of favoriting or being on their list of alerts, you all get bacon (or more cookies if bacon and hugs just ain't your thing).**_

_**And finally, to the amazing and awesomely fantastic vixenXfreezepop and jandjsalmon, who have gifted me with the most perfect gift of reviews, I offer you both my eternal gratitude and a plethora of baked goods crafted by the masters of pastry. Cause you guys are that cool. **_

_**Much love to all of you, **_

_**Merida**_


	6. Chapter 5: Like a Rolling Stone

_**I am looking to purchase the rights to American Horror Story. I am currently in negotiations with Falchuk and Murphy, and we have yet to settle on an appropriate price. But until the sale is finalized, I am quite afraid that I do not own anything to do with the franchise. Thank you for your understanding.**_

**CHAPTER 5: You're Invisible Now; You've Got No Secrets to Conceal**

-O-0-o-0-O-

_"__You say you never compromise with a mystery tramp, but now you realize he's not selling any alibis as you stare into the vacuum of his eyes and say, 'do you want to make a deal?'"_

_-Bob Dylan, 'Like a Rolling Stone'_

-O-0-o-0-O-

The Supreme Queen's nails made the slaps she threw sting like a bigger bitch than she was.

Violet wondered for the fifteen billionth time why she was sitting there (actually, she'd been knocked to the ground at this point) just taking it.

Maybe it was her five other fight-related school suspensions and the fact that despite what Vivien and Ben might ever so desperately want to believe, this was _far_ from a fresh start. Besides, she'd managed to skip every single one of her classes at least once out of sheer boredom or to grab a bit of relief from the idiots that seemed to live in this part of town.

Or maybe Boston just had less IQ-eating fumes.

And another hit!

Harmon is down, folks, I don't know how she'll recover from this one! She might be out for the season with an injury like that, but here comes Mrs. Thompson to break it up!

The commentator in her head was going wild as her vision swam and her Geography teacher grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. It was all a blur of 'she hit me first' and 'she should be suspended' while she stood there, silent.

Next thing she knew, she was pulled to the principal's office and shoved into an overstuffed leather chair.

The statements launched from that wrinkled mouth, dried spittle leaving a whitish goo at the corner of sagging lips and drooping jowls, were like bullets.

_Do you understand what you've done?_

_Do you know what the punishment for such acts is?_

_This will definitely appear on your permanent record. _

_I will personally contact your parents to tell them about your imminent suspension._

But Violet was made of rubber.

After all of those stolen moments spent with _him_, nothing felt real anymore. Going through the motions was like being a bystander in a stranger's dream. Hazy, surreal, impossible to care about.

In that moment, she hated him. He had done this to her; turned her into some disconnected zombie. He'd stolen every ounce of emotion she could muster and kept it all to himself, locked away in a heart-shaped box. _Freaking Cobain wannabe. _

So Violet just played dumb and nodded at the right moments and looked down in mock shame on cue. But her mind was running a mile a minute over a course of jumbled thoughts and confused memories.

She didn't even register her mother coming to collect her from the office a few hours later. She was rubber. No- she was nothing; she was void.

-O-0-o-0-O-

Tate found Violet in the bathroom. Not an unusual occurrence, but this time she wasn't inflicting wounds upon herself; she was cleaning the ones someone else had forced upon her.

Tate had always believed that scars could be beautiful. They were a lifetime of pain etched on a canvas so much more personal than the one any old person could go out and purchase at an art store. They were the tattoos of injuries. Each one had a story, one that could only be whispered in the ear of a lover when the light was dim and the person telling it was certain that no one could see their flaws.

Now, his Violet had a new story to tell. One that wasn't long forgotten in the blur that time could be to the living or an expression of her frustration.

_It bothers you that someone else put it there, doesn't it, psycho? _

He wanted a lot of things from these moments that belonged to someone else. He wanted to be cared about. He wanted to not be alone anymore. He wanted to be able to care about someone. He wanted himself to _finally shut the fuck up._

"I could take care of it", he heard himself whisper. "I could make whoever did this stop."

Violet turned abruptly, her tiny hand clutching the place over her chest where she kept her every hope and dream as if to guard it from him. "Geezus Tate! You scared me."

"I could scare the person who did this to you."

He reached out with limp fingers to flutter against her reddening cheek. She pulled back.

"No, Tate."

He couldn't help but feel almost disappointed in her lack of action or willingness to use what he so readily offered.

"I-I can deal with this on my own. I need to be able to do this alone", she mumbled, returning the hand holding a piece of gauze to the deep cut over her eyebrow. She was shaking.

A pang hit him in the chest, and Tate reached out once again, this time with comforting arms. Violet allowed him to cage her in them. She was his delicate little songbird. He knew exactly how he wanted her to end up.

She had to depend on him for everything. They had to become so close that they acted as one, thought as one, believed as one. But he craved control. He needed it, in small doses. Like medicine. But he had to be careful not to get addicted. Or else he would take more than she could give, and that would break her. And he didn't want that. Not for his Violet.

"Let me handle it for you", he whispered, stroking her hair. She shivered. "Let me make it go away."

"No. _No."_

Her voice grew stronger. Thankfully, she didn't fight his hold on her, but simply continued to refuse his offer. The one that if he was in her shoes, he wouldn't turn down in a thousand years.

_Maybe she doesn't realize just what you're offering, psycho._

_Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutuppppppp…_

"I feel like you're draining me away, Tate", Violet said, her quiet words speaking truth in volumes that her voice did not. "I need to do this for myself before I can't keep my head above whatever it is you're doing to me."

She understood more than he'd expected.

He felt pride at her intelligence and fear at her pulling away at once. It made him want to bend over the sink and vomit the nothing that sat in his stomach.

"I guess I'll stop then", Tate answered, his tone playful but his lack-of-a-heart heavy. Monsters don't have hearts.

"I never said that." Her reply shocked him speechless. He had nothing left to say.

Violet carefully twisted away from his embrace and opened the bathroom door.

"I'm going to ask my mom for help. She's good at stitching me up", she continued, smiling a weary grin. "God knows she's had to do it often enough."

Tate was left alone in front of the mirror that reflected the lie of his angelic face back at him.

Raising his fingers to his lips, he felt the rapidly cooling moisture there.

Copper. Blood from her forehead.

Smirking, he licked it away.

-O-0-o-0-O-

The rest of the week dragged on.

Violet hadn't seen Tate since she'd pushed herself to turn him down. The offer had been so tempting, it felt wrong. She didn't want to be the next Eve, biting that goddamned apple held out by the snake and getting humanity kicked out of paradise. No, she wanted this impossible life to last.

Ben had left not long after Vivien had gleefully announced to him that they were expecting a brand new bundle of joy. The news, overheard by their forgotten and now obsolete daughter, had left a bitter taste in Violet's mouth. She knew exactly what was going to happen. They'd lived it six months earlier, and look where it'd left them.

Vivien was a paranoid wreck. Ben was an unfaithful asshole. Violet was a masochistic mess.

God only knew what the next tiny little coffin would do to them all.

But Violet knew exactly where Ben had fled to, and it made her want to punch a wall. So she did. She emerged relatively unscathed, save for a newly made bloodstain on her wall and split knuckles.

And even worse, that Constance bitch had visited.

Violet liked Addie, she could admit that. The poor woman was a product of her evil mother's horrible mothering and bad judgment. But even so, she was the most optimistic person she had ever met, if not a little odd.

But Constance… Constance left her feeling like she was being eaten alive by those scornful eyes.

The cupcake that woman had left her had been promptly moved to outside her door. Sugared violets and chocolate frosting could only spell trouble. Besides, she was in no mood for desserts.

The fact that the woman who had prided herself on being her mother for sixteen years was convinced that Violet was so ignorant or oblivious to those around her that she could get away with not telling her about the baby made her retch. Literally. She had thrown up the little she had eaten for breakfast, having forsaken lunch in the hopes of escaping that Valley Girl.

The very lack of mention of a new sibling had instigated a heated argument. She knew exactly why Vivien had decided to lay off The Pill. And it was pathetic. There was no way that some unborn fetus could be the glue between Mr. and Mrs. Harmon, broken family extraordinaire.

Being left out yet again made her want to curl up and cry.

She wanted Tate.

She wanted to yell at him for causing this empty sensation in her thoughts and superficiality in her emotions. This was all him, and she knew it.

If it wasn't for him and his cryptic answers and half-baked fairy tales, she would be able to get angry properly- not this crappy annoyance tinged with a hint of resentment, and then recover. That was how she dealt. That was how she lived.

Violet needed to regain some form of that control that she no longer had over anything she did. Everything was dictated to her by the heavy shadow of depression that hung over her head and rained restriction down on her life.

Her fingers twitched for the cold steel that would paint her skin in her frustrations. She craved the reminder that only she had the power to decide whether she lived or died. All it would take was a slip, or one too many, and she was gone; no one could touch her, not even the growth taking over her mind at every waking moment of her day.

Tate.

"Tate."

Without even noticing, she had allowed his name to pass her lips as she reached out, hurt and wanting. She felt like a burden to the world. Like an unwanted toddler whose skill set included only crying and screwing everything up.

"I'm here, Violet."

His voice stroked her ear, making its way past her head and right down to her heart.

She let out a short cry, jumping as his arms wormed around her waist and pulling her close. There was no way he was a ghost. No ghost could do _this_ with their presence- not to the living.

"How did you-"

Her question was cut off by his mouth, ambushing her own from the side.

His lips, once hesitant and soft, were almost bruising in intensity as they collided with her own. Instead of the careful dance they had performed before, he was taking a definite lead. He was taking away the control she had grasped at so desperately just moments before. So Violet fought back with equal dominance, pressing for his acknowledgement of her superiority. That acknowledgement never came.

They simply continued until they both agreed to pull apart without the use of words. They didn't need verbal communication when it came to this, not anymore.

Tate's lazy smirk reminded her of what she had been about to say.

"How in the hell did you get up here?" Violet hissed, poking one finger into his left shoulder. She couldn't forget that she was mad at him for abandoning her for a week. She couldn't dismiss everything he had said, the crap he had tried to pull…

_Maybe I can forget to remember all of that shit if he kisses me like that again…_

Digging her nails into the thin flesh of her palm, she forced herself to let go of those thoughts. _Though that sure as fuck would be more pleasant than trying to get real answers out of him…_

"I'm a ghost, remember?" His smirk grew wider and he let loose a chuckle. "You don't see me until I want you to."

"I thought we were done with this crap, Tate. Besides, what's that supposed to mean?"

He let his chin rest on her shoulder. "It means that I can watch you in the shower."

No. this was too much.

Somehow twisting away from his vice-grip, Violet turned to face him, willing her small frame to overshadow his, just for this once.

_You see what he's done to you? You can only feel when he'd around. And now he keeps feeding you this bullshit line that he knows is just to screw with you._

With her fight with Vivien, Constance's unannounced house call and now this, Violet was ready to break.

"If this is how you're going to act right now, Tate, just _leave me the fuck _**alone!**"

Boom.

The effect was not unlike emptying several clips into his chest.

Tate staggered back, an expression of shock and hurt flashing across his beautiful yet tragic face before disappearing into one of anger.

"You lied, Violet. You told me you'd never tell me to leave."

Each word was more loaded than the rifle Ben kept under his bed, just in case.

But what scared her most was what his features had twisted into.

_Oh god. He looks like that guy form that old movie. The one who wore a crazy jumpsuit and had those blue, blue eyes… you know, the one that got sent to jail and brainwashed by the government…_

_Alex from 'A Clockwork Orange'._

_Wasn't he a psychopathic murdering rapist?_

_…_

_Oh god._

And then he was just gone, as if he'd never been there to begin with.

Just before Violet could catch her breath again, her breathing halted the moment she heard something from downstairs.

Vivien was screaming.

-O-0-o-0-O-

_**Hello, hello lovelies!**_

_**'Tis I, returned from a long week of procrastinating with this chapter and cursing Microsoft Word for being a complete and utter- **_

_**Okay, on to better and brighter things. Or maybe not.**_

_**Again, I have so much more in store when it comes to this story. The unhappy awkward moments are far, far from over (sorry).**_

_**A thank you of large proportions to my marvelous readers, as usual, you have made this worth doing.**_

_**A larger thank you to those among you impossibly amazing enough to favorite and add me to your alerts.**_

_**The biggest thank you to vixenXfreepop (I want to be your friend too :D), jandjsalmon, Jadeoblue and Tatertot ( I lovelovelove your username xD), who are the best people on the face of the planet.**_

_**All right. It's getting late-ish, I have school and I want to go watch more episodes of American Horror Story.**_

_**Merida, out.**_


	7. Chapter 6: O Children

_**All right. You all know where this is going. I say that I don't own American Horror Story, wish that I did, and you guys just sort of ignore that it's written here, cause let's be honest, nobody reads disclaimers. **_

_**-O-0-o-0-O-**_

**CHAPTER 6: Pass Me That Lovely Little Gun**

-O-0-o-0-O-

_"__We have the answer to all your fears; it's short, it's simple, it's crystal clear, it's roundabout and it's somewhere here; lost amongst our winnings…"_

_-Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, 'O Children'_

-O-0-o-0-O-

**Drip. **

**Drip.**

**Drip.**

Tate blinked, trying to clear the blood from his eyes. It had run from the tips of his hair, down his forehead and onto his eyelashes. The entire basement stank of old pennies and salt.

Red dripped from the walls in wildly spaced arcs, pouring from the single bulb in the room, tinting the light a sick shade of crimson.

This was what happened when you killed Hugo Langdon with a butter knife half a dozen times in an hour.

Oh yes, Tate knew all too well that his father hadn't run away with the maid, like the old hag had told him once upon twenty years ago. He'd figured that out pretty much from the get-go. Of course he had.

Disturbed and lonely little boy, trapped in a haunted house bursting at the seams with the victims of violent deaths. Disturbed and lonely little boy, who spoke to his not-so-imaginary friends, all of whom lacked a pulse. Disturbed and lonely little boy, who knew all too well that the things that went bump in the night were real.

It was a miracle that he didn't go all Patrick Bateman earlier.

He preferred to vent his rage and bloodlust on the man who was responsible for his birth than the others in the house.

Tate knew better than to underestimate the power the women of this house held. And besides, he didn't really feel like taking anything out on the twins, and _never _Beau. Not his poor brother.

With a final effort, he shoved the stub of what was once an ordinary piece of cutlery, worn down by countless hits against bone and flesh into the wall.

"I'll take that as a cue for you being done", Hugo muttered, his dismembered limbs reattaching themselves and the intestines liberated from his abdomen returning to where they belonged. He got to his feet and dusted himself off, giving Tate one last look before he turned and walked out of the room.

The blood on the walls vanished, leaving only the knife.

Tate kept staring at his hands, seeing the stain of red that was always there. Always.

-O-0-o-0-O-

She was tripping over her feet as she ran down the stairs.

A plethora of the worst possible scenarios rushed through her head as she stumbled.

_Vivien, covered in blood. Losing the baby all over again. _

_Ben, bringing that stupid slut home with news of another bundle of joy. _

The scene that greeted Violet Harmon, depressed teen extraordinaire, was far, far worse.

Her mother was pale as a sheet, calling her name desperately. Like a child lost in the supermarket, looking for its mother. Funny how the roles get reversed in times of fear, isn't it?

"Where's your phone?" Vivien asked frantic ally, looking between Violet and the upstairs landing as if it would come to life and eat them both.

"In my bag upstairs, why?"

"Go-go-go get it", her mother stuttered, her hand following her repetition. "Dial 9-1-1."

The doorbell rang, punctuating the situation with a more macabre symbolism. _For whom the bell tolls…_

"Who's that?" Violet inquired, noting how Vivien seemed to jump at the sound.

"Just go to your room, lock the door and don't come out until I tell you."

Violet stared at her mother in disbelief. The doorbell chimed again.

"Now!"

Turning and sprinting back up the stairs she had nearly broken her neck on, Violet rushed to her room, thanking god that she was allowed the small reassurance of a locked door.

Dumping her bag out onto her bed, she found no more than her iPod, the lighter Tate had left behind, her cigarette case and a few pens. She continued to sift through her things, hoping that this was just another one of her mother's paranoid episodes and it was just a very insistent vacuum cleaner salesman waiting on their porch.

She missed noticing the black-masked figure emerging from her closet.

-O-0-o-0-O-

_Why am I always the one caught in a vulnerable position? Why me? _

Violet pondered her inability to remain removed from the troubles of this house.

_First Tate and his whole 'ooh, I'm dead and there are other ghosts here too and stuff' thing and now this. _

Tied to a chair next to her was her mother, and she glared at the three people who had decided that her house was the place to be tonight. Tonight, of all nights, when Ben, the brute, was in Boston. The one reason why Violet even tolerated him was the fact that he knew how to throw a good punch when he needed to. And even worse, she knew she couldn't count on tate to help her. Not now, not ever again.

"I-I have money", Vivien sobbed. "Please, just take anything."

"We're not here to rob you", came one of the masked women's muffled voices. "Masks off."

They removed the things covering their faces only to reveal one of the patients that Ben had spent a session with earlier that day before he ran off like some sort of startled faun.

"The transcript was very clear. It said the nurse saw Franklin. He had nothing to hide."

It was the other woman, the brunette who spoke. "Twelve minutes."

"And then the fun begins", added 'Bianca', who kept her eyes firmly fixed on Violet as she talked. Her smirk made her want to spit right in her face.

"I have a surprise for you girls", the other one continued as 'Bianca' pushed back her hair with the hand holding her knife. She stepped forwards, a white bundle in her hands, carefully unwrapping the object inside as if it was made of glass.

Inside lay a heavy ashtray, the sight making the male one chuckle with delight. "No way."

"I got it on EBay. Authenticated. It's the one he used to bash Maria."

The very thought of beating someone with a stone bowl used to extinguish cigarettes seemed to make the trio flutter with joy.

_Sickos, _Violet growled to herself. _Then again, you made out with a self-professed psychopath. Twice._

"Let me see it", the man said gleefully, his smile growing wider as he reached over and picked it up. "Holy shit. You can feel the energy in it. This is bitchin'."

'Bianca' looked catlike in her smug grin as she purveyed the two being held captive. "Who goes first?"

"Which one's Gladys?"

This seemed to stump them for a moment, and they took a moment to think about it as the male one still stroked the bowl, starry-eyed.

The brunette pointed to Vivien, then Violet with her knife, and the blonde threw another bunch of white fabric at her.

The smell was hair-risingly sterile, stinking of rubbing alcohol and generic soap. It was almost as if they had stolen it from a real hospital. Thinking back on how much they prided themselves on details, that wouldn't have surprised Violet one bit.

"Screw you, psycho!" she shouted, shoving the fabric as far away as she could manage. Something about it felt foreboding. She didn't like the sensation it gave off. And there was also the fact that she was being held hostage by a bunch of maniacs who apparently had no interest in robbing them. That was a first.

"I'm not putting this on."

For a moment, she felt pride in herself for refusing to go silently, to give in to the demands of these insane captors of hers. She wasn't helpless right now. She was in control again.

"You have to." The three of them turned to stare at her directly, each toting a weapon of some sort. That fleeting moment of strength vanished, replaced by a chill-inducing realization of the gravity of the situation. This was real. This was happening right now. It wasn't some procedural cop show she was watching on re-run with Vivien. It wasn't some horror movie that she was viewing alone in her room. This was happening to her. Right. Now.

"Everything has to be perfect."

"Take your clothes off!" yelled the man, tearing at Violet's top. Vivien screamed, and Violet shouted. He raised his arm, the ashtray held firmly in one fist, ready to strike her.

"Take me instead!" her mother cried.

"Oh, you'll both be wearing uniforms", the brunette, who seemed to be in charge, said in a deceptively cheerful voice. "Of course, R. Franklin _hated_ nurses. He had a bad experience with the mercury in a broken thermometer. That's why he chose to take Gladys upstairs and drowned her in the tub."

She moved to stand right in front of Vivien, her blade not six inches from her face. "And you, Maria, he saved you for last."

"R. Franklin was the first", interjected 'Bianca'. "Before Manson. He changed the culture. We're paying tribute to him."

But Violet's mother had slipped into the calm, cool façade she used to deal with her unfaithful husband and any other issue she didn't want to acknowledge. "We're not going to be part of your re-enactment."

The brunette acted as if Vivien hadn't even opened her mouth. Dumping the nurse's uniform at Violet's feet, she once again instructed her to put it on.

"You won't like it if I have to make you."

It was then that Violet managed to remember where that bright streak of 'you-can-go-shove-it-up-your-ass' was hidden under those soft brown eyes and layers of vintage clothing. Standing up, she held the fabric for a moment. And then she struck.

It wasn't the most elegant or the best-choreographed of attacks, but her head butt into the man was effective. He dropped his beloved ashtray, and mayhem ensued.

In her struggle to untie her mother all while getting away, she only managed to help Vivien kick another one of her assaulters and run. She scrambled, searching for a place to hide. Then, in a moment of bright inspiration, she ducked into another doorway, pausing to catch her breath.

"Tate."

"Tate", she pleaded, on the verge of tears. Her, his perfect, strong Violet, reduced to this. "Tate, please. I believe you. You're dead. You were right. I was wrong. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. Tate.."

Her voice cut off as she swallowed, preparing herself to promise the impossible the impossible thing.

"Tate, if you help me, you never have to leave again. You'll _never leave again."_

For a second, Violet could feel the air shift, and her breath caught. Had he heard her? Would he save her?

Bianca rushed in, her arms reaching and grabbing at Violet, pulling her away.

As she fought the grip, Violet felt her heart clench and her fingers go numb.

_He's not coming. _

_Oh god. I'm going to die._

-O-0-o-0-O-

The water pouring from the shining silver tap would have felt freezing, if Violet hadn't already lost all feeling in her body. Pulling on stockings in front of her murderer-to-be seemed awkward.

"What the hell's taking you so long?"

Violet remained silent. Tate wasn't coming to save her. She was as good as dead. Dead, like he was. Would she become a ghost too? She hoped not.

Bianca came in, munching on the poisonous cupcake that Constance had brought over like some sort of chipmunk on Prozac.

"Really?" the brunette said, her tone condescending. "You're eating?"

"It was like, sitting there, saying 'eat me'", the blonde mumbled, her cheeks full of the cake that Violet's neighbor had probably spiked with some sort of rat poison.

Looking at Violet again, the brunette gave her a frustrated look. "Step on it! Time's a-wastin', sister!"

A noise outside made the three pause.

"Did you get all of the cell phones?" she asked, her fingers tightening around the grip of her knife.

"Yeah", Bianca replied, still eating. "I told you, the one in the kitchen and-"

Her stomach made an audible groan, and she staggered a bit. "Mmh, stomachache. Jesus, I'm gonna shit myself."

There was another sound, this time louder.

"Not in the bathroom!" the other woman exclaimed, as if her partner in crime had just committed a serious offence. "What the _fuck _is that?"

"G-go, I'll stay with the girl", Bianca replied. "And I promise I won't screw up the staging area."

"You'd better not fuck this up. I'll be back", the brunette said hurriedly, ducking out the door.

"Fuck-"

Bianca barely made it to the toilet before she started to vomit up anything she'd eaten in her life, thanks to Constance's skills in the kitchen.

Violet stood there, a vision in white, hesitant. Could she possibly survive this?

"Get-", the remaining woman started in between heaves. "Get in the tub."

One foot in the ice-cold water, Violet shivered. But not because of the temperature.

There, in the doorway, covered in blood, stood her knight in second-hand sweaters.

"Tate."

The word was quiet.

It made him smile, raising something dull and silver. Something already drenched in gore.

"Hello, Violet."

He drove the piece of metal into Bianca- who had only just stopped retching- 's neck.

"I missed you…" His voice lingered on the last syllable, drawing it out as his victim bled out.

Violet opened her mouth to speak.

-O-0-o-0-O-

_**Right. Soo, I did what I promised to myself I wouldn't. **_

_**I...**_

_**I copied dialogue directly from the show. And it took me so. Damn. Long.**_

_**I'm sorry if it seems boring because of this, but I needed to get that bit out of the way for Violet to finally admit to herself that even if she does want to seem strong, she really, really does need Tate to rely on, just as much as he relies on her. But on the bright side, from here on in, it'll be even more AU than before, and there'll be less direct quotation and I can shape the characters into exactly what I need them to be.**_

_**On to thank yous:**_

_**Readers: You guys are great. I say it every time, but I really do mean it. Thanks.**_

_**Favorites/Alerts (and the people who have added me on either one): You people are even better :D I love you guys.**_

_**Reviews: You each get your own personal thank you, so here goes...**_

_**MrsTateLangdon: Thank you thank you :) And I updated, so I hope that makes you happy :D**_

_**vixenXfreezepop: You're awesome, and you've stuck with this story from the beginning, so that makes you doubly awesome. I have a definite ending in mind for this story, but all that goes on in-between is fair game, because I write these chapters on a weekly basis, and I usually only finish them a few minutes before I post. But I promise, the end will be well worth the wait, and the journey there will hopefully be just as good :)**_

_**jandjsalmon: Again, a wonderful person who has been there every chapter :D The intensity will only ramp up, and so will the Violate. My deviation from cannon will increase, but I hope that I will still manage to keep the characters well within their possible realities and don't make it too unbelievable. Thanks again :)**_

_**On a more final note, I might, might, MIGHT put an M scene in this story eventually. I'm still on the fence about it. I want to hear feedback on that, because that will influence my decision. As much as I write this for me, I do write it for other people to enjoy, and I would prefer to lead this story in a direction that makes everyone happy. Please, tell me what you think. **_

_**Merida, signing off.**_


	8. Chapter 7: House of the Rising Sun

_**DISCLAIMER: Idon'townitbutIwanttoandallthestuffinbetweenNOWGOR EADTHEAUTHOR'SNOTEEVENTHOUGHNOONEREALLYDOESTHAT. GO!**_

**CHAPTER 7: It's Been the Ruin of Many a Poor Boy**

-O-0-o-0-O-

_"__Oh mother, tell your children not to do what I have done; spend your lives in sin and misery in the House of the Rising Sun…"_

_-The Animals, 'House of the Rising Sun'_

-O-0-o-0-O-

"Let's get you cleaned up."

_Your boyfriend just killed your would-be murderer without a second thought right in front of you and __**that's**__ your first reaction? God, you two deserve each other._

But want it or not, Tate did need to clean himself up. His blond hair was stained a weak red from blood, and he looked like he had been rolling in dust. He also looked like he could use a good dozen hugs or so.

His dark eyes, moments before so angry and blank of any other emotion, were filled with a sad sort of lost fear. He knew exactly what he'd done, but he knew all too well that he couldn't do anything to change it, and wouldn't have acted any differently if given a second chance.

All the while, he looked so lonely; Violet couldn't help but reach out for him from where she stood in the bath. "Come."

He shuffled forwards, his bare feet and the hem of his jeans making a quiet scuffing sound against the floor. Standing at the foot of the tub, Tate allowed her to pull off the green-striped black sweater that hung loosely from his frame. She felt almost like a mother bathing her child in his lack of response.

_What about your own mother, you selfish girl? The one who offered to DIE IN YOUR PLACE?_

Violet dropped Tate's sweater from her numb fingertips.

"Tate", she whispered, her voice shaking. She looked back into those eyes that had made her see just how different his world was from her own. "Tate, where's my mother?"

He looked down at her small feet, encased in a thin mesh of white stocking. They looked even paler in the glacial water, which was steadily draining any color from her skin that remained after the weight of the events of the night. "You look like a corpse."

"Where's my mother, Tate? Where's Vivien?"

The urgency in her voice rose as he continued to stare at her colorless flesh with a sick yet innocent fascination.

He looked up again.

"She's safe."

He looked down again. "You're the same as I was when I died the first time."

"Where is she? _Where's my mommy?_"

Her tone rose from that of a hushed murmur to that of shameless screaming. She wanted her mother. She wanted her safe. She wanted her to be okay.

It didn't matter how much she resented Vivien for staying with Ben, or making her move here. It didn't matter if she made her feel angry at the best of times. It didn't matter if she thought her mother's attempts to glue her Humpty-Dumpty marriage back together with a fetus were pathetic and sad.

It didn't matter because when Vivien was okay, everything was all right.

Tate returned his gaze to the girl he had once called 'perfect'. "She's hiding in a closet by the kitchen. She's fine."

"And how do you know that?" Violet retorted snappishly, crossing her arms. His lips quirked in a short bland smile before returning to their previous state.

"Because someone already dealt with the last one."

Violet made to climb out of the tub, ready to rush to her mother's side to see if she really was all right, but Tate placed a heavy hand on her shoulder.

"She's fine."

The look on his face practically spelt finality with a capital 'S-T-O-P-A-S-K-I-N-G'. She sighed, her shoulders going slack and her stance weakening. "I guess I'll have to take your word for it then."

He nodded once in a subtle movement of his chin. He then braced himself on the lip of the tub, pulling himself into the cold water. The resulting ripples lapped at Violet's calves, as it was only up to her knees in depth. He sat down in it, neglecting the fact that it was freezing enough to cut off circulation. He just sat there, knees drawn close to his chest, his arms covered in so many scars that they looked like patchwork and reaching, still reaching.

Violet took his hands and let him pull her down with him.

_And that's all he'll ever do, Violet. He'll just pull you down with him. _

_Down to his level. Past rock bottom._

_It was said that the Devil was beautiful. That's what made him so tempting. And dangerous._

But Violet ignored the voices in her head from where they whispered in the shadows of her darkest thoughts. The ones left to rot in a box labeled "Truth; DO NOT HANDLE".

And she sat there, cradled in the unnaturally warm arms of the perhaps not the most frightening monster in the house, but certainly the most hazardous. Violet sealed her fate, tying herself to the poor lost little boy as well as the attractive and charming cold-blooded killer that both lived inside of Tate Langdon.

Violet Harmon set her destiny in stone with softly whispered words of comfort to a broken murderer, stroking his blood-soaked hair and letting him hold her against his shaking body.

-O-0-o-0-O-

Vivien was still in shock by the time Violet came back down the stairs.

She had moved from the closet to an armchair, her shoulders visibly trembling and her soft hands clutching at her cell phone so hard that her knuckles were turning white.

"Mom."

The word escaped Violet's mouth as she rushed over, wrapping her arms around her and carefully removing the phone from her tight grip. Vivien's hands moved to shield her stomach, her eyes still wide open and staring straight ahead.

"I already called your father."

Her tone was dead, empty of any emotion or sentiment. Violet hugged her harder; the wet nurse's uniform causing spots of damp to appear on her mother's sweater. If she noticed, she didn't react.

"He's coming home early. He's taking the red-eye tonight."

"Fine, Mom, but are you okay? Did he- did he hurt you?" Violet asked the question in a shaky voice, not certain if she was asking about the would-be murderer or Tate. She still didn't know for sure who had 'taken care of' the man, but if she had to bet, she'd put her money on him.

"No."

She breathed a sigh of relief, rubbing Vivien's shoulders.

"He heard something in the basement and went to go see what it was."

_"__Don't go into the basement. Not without me", Tate had whispered to her once upon a lazy afternoon. _

"The screams… oh god, the screams…"

Vivien buried her head into Violet's shoulder, starting to sob.

_"__I'm not the only monster in this house."_

"I don't know what happened, but it… it wouldn't stop. I can still hear him screaming inside my head…"

_"__But I promise you only one thing. I won't make any promises."_

"It's okay, Mom. He's gone now. We're safe. We're safe."

She continued to hold her mother, emotional fragility and all, taking the weight of the world onto her shoulders made of porcelain and decorated with paper wings.

Tate watched them from behind a doorway, his dark eyes engulfing Violet's as he watched her try to grow strong and fly away from her life.

And he watched her fail. And he watched her fall.

-O-0-o-0-O-

Tate stood in the basement, feet bare and his town jeans and mop of hair dripping water onto the concrete of the floor.

Constance stood at his left, staring at the three bodies with a look of disgust clinging to her face like lipstick left on the rim of a glass. "Was this _your_ handiwork?"

She said it like she expected every horror that sprang from this house to be his fault and his fault alone. And the worst part was that she was mostly right.

"Not all of it." Moira's aged voice echoed from his right. That poor woman. Just another victim of the house. Of Constance's whims. Of Constance's rash decisions. And his father's repulsive habits.

"We need to get rid of this mess." Constance spoke as if this was just a little spill, or child having written on the walls in crayon. It made Tate wonder how she was ever able to raise four children. But then he remembered that all she had done was throw them tongue-lashing remarks and scathing insults every other minute. Some mother she was.

"I'll get the bleach."

-O-0-o-0-O-

"And the one with the blond hair left me alone, saying she was looking for the other woman, who hadn't come back in ten minutes."

Violet sat at the dining room table, dressed in dry clothes and staring at the swirls in the wood as she told her recollection of the story. At least, the version she had decided on only minutes after she found her mother.

"Then I came downstairs when I was sure she was gone and I found my mother sitting on the couch."

Vivien's gaze was set straight on Ben, blank and unwavering as the detective asking them questions continued.

"Now, you said that Mrs. Harmon had heard screaming from the basement. Did you hear anything? Anything at all?"

Violet shook her head. "No. I didn't hear anything." _But you know that there was a lot more than just screaming going on in that basement, now don't you? _

"Mrs. Harmon, are you certain that you did in fact hear screaming from the basement?"

Her mother kept staring at her husband, but shook her head. "I'm not sure. Everything just happened so fast…"

The detective sighed and put away the recording device he'd placed on the table.

"Well, please rest assured that we'll find them. No one can hide for long. Not even in a city this big."

_But I know a place where you don't ever have to hide, _Violet thought to herself. _A place where you can't hide. A place where demons make their homes and dead things are restless. _

_And you'll never find them. Not even in a city this big._

-O-0-o-0-O-

She sat by the window, her arm limp and hanging out, flicking ash from the glowing tip of her cigarette. Her slightly gold hair shone in the sunlight and the light of the day made her seem even more surreal.

"Beautiful."

Her head turned suddenly so she could face him. "Tate! How did- right. You don't need open doors to get in."

Her expression was kept carefully restrained and neutral, but in her soft brown eyes, he could glimpse fleeting reactions passing by like flipping through the pages of a book.

_Fear. Uncertainty. Hesitation. Relief. Affection._

The last one was the one that lingered just a bit longer than the others, and was the thing that convinced him that stepping forwards and sitting opposite her on the windowsill was the right thing to do. "Can I bum a rig? I haven't had any in a while."

Violet studied his almost sheepish grin, taking in how he was properly dressed this time around; sporting a plaid shirt, his regular much-loved jeans and a pair of ratty Chuck Taylors. As always, he was the poster boy for Grunge. He looked exactly as if he had just rolled out of bed.

_He still manages to look good though, Violet. Don't try and lie to yourself. _

Rolling her eyes and letting a smile trickle onto her lips, she took one more drag and held out the cigarette she'd lit seconds before he entered the room out. He took it between long fingers, pressing it into his mouth, taking a deep pull before tilting his chin upwards and letting the smoke out in a gentle stream.

"God, I've missed that."

Violet allowed herself a small laugh, taking the cancer stick back when he offered it up.

"So…" Her attempt to start a sentence was left hanging as she paused to inhale from the cigarette. "How long have you been dead?"

"Since '94." His response was light enough and his eyes remained full of the more healthy-looking darkness that usually seemed more haunting and unsafe.

"I guess that explains the look", Violet muttered, smirking a bit before she passed the rig back to Tate.

He let loose a short chuckle, looking at her as if he was still seeing her for the first time. His hand not holding the cigarette reached out, brushing her hair out of her eyes and touching her cheek. He let it fall after a minute or so, enjoying the comfortable silence.

"I guess this means you believe me, huh?" She nodded after a few seconds, gazing outside.

"There was always something a little… different about you. Something not right."

He took a drag, leaning forwards and blowing it out onto her face. Violet giggled. Tate leaned back again.

"Oh, I'm all kinds of not right, Violet Harmon", he replied, grinning again. "And not just the dead kind either."

They both turned their eyes outside, where Marsha-Molly-Morgan was putting up the 'For Sale' sign.

"You aren't really going to leave me, are you?" His voice, so happy just moments before became distressed and doubtful as the sign seemed to grow so large that it took over his entire vision.

"Couldn't you come with us?" He shook his golden head, NO.

"I can't leave the house. None of us can. You die here, you stay here."

Violet bit her lip, looking over him and the way he seemed to draw just a little closer to her, afraid that she would tell him to go away again. "I'll do my best."

His eyes moved too look at her.

"I'll beg. I'll plead. I'll throw fits. I'll complain. I'll do everything I can to stay here."

She was promising this boy- this mentally unstable and wonderfully confusing boy- a lot. But he'd saved her life so many times. More than he probably even realized. She owed him everything.

"I'll do anything."

Perhaps the smile that grew on his face should've worried her, full of dark things that creep under your skin and claw their way into your heart, wanted or not, but this was Tate.

And no matter how much of a monster Tate was- had been- would be, he was hers.

Her monster.

He was the one lurking under her bed late at night. He was the sound that she heard from outside under the cover of darkness. He was the one who would loom over her as she slept, giving her the most wonderful of nightmares that brought joy as they did horror.

Her monster.

-O-0-o-0-O-

_**AWRIGHT! Before I lose your attention, I'll get this out of the way and hope you actually did bother read this: **_

_**POSSIBLE M SCENE-MOMENT-THINGAMABOB: Yay or nay? (You guys' opinion very much affects my own in this! Sure, I write this story and I generally do whatever the hell I want, but you guys DO read it, so YOUR OPINIONS DO MATTER, especially on this one.)**_

_**Okay, that was what I REALLY needed to get out of the way, but in other news, I am literally one more exams from being done school this year (cue fanfare and parade) :D **_

_**That and I get a laptop soon, so that means possiblypossiblyPOSSIBLY more updates (it all depends on my level of motivation and flow of ideas... sorry :P) **_

_**Aaaaaaand...**_

_**Readers: I LOVE YOU. SO MUCH. I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT. KAY. (also note that I am typing this with the most poker-y of poker faces. I'm not generally one to express my feels on a facial level whilst on the internet BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN I LOVE YOU ANY LESS)**_

_**People who favorite/add me to their alerts: (I'm running out of adjectives that can fully describe my utter appreciation for you guys buuuuttt...) you are all breathtakingly stupendous, fabulously stunning people. A great big hug to each of you. (I don't care if you don't like me infringing upon your personal space. Too bad. I want to hug you, so I will.)**_

_**Reviewers:**_

_**jandjsalmon: Greetings from ECCENTRICALLY ECSTATIC IRON MAN (Cause RDJ is awesome, and so are you. THANKS :D) **_

_**Rock The Rain: Moar Crazy Tate to come! It just keeps on going from here xD Hope you liked the chapter :)**_

_**Xvixenfreezepop: Personally, the first episode is my absolute favorite ever cause it just got me sooo freaking hooked, and I'm happy you liked the Hugo/Tate interaction. Because we ALL know who would win in a fight. Besides, Tate has all those unresolved Daddy issues to fuel that homicidal butter-knife rage ;D From here on out, I'll still be referring to the episodes for some of the events, but it diverges more and more as we go along. Hope you like this chapter too :D**_

_**Right, sorry that was so long-winded, but the first bit was the really important part, so if you all didn't read past there, I promise, PROMISE not to get angry at you. I promise. **_

_**(I lied. because THAT'S WHAT PEOPLE DO!)**_

_**(Nah, I lied again. I won't get annoyed :) )**_

_**That's all for now, ladies, gentlemen and variations thereupon!**_

_**-Merida**_


	9. Chapter 8: Silverfuck

_**Okay, I admit it. I don't own American Horror Story. Yet. But you just wait, Murphy and Falchuk. You just wait.**_

_**Alsoalsoalso, please see the author's note at the bottom (I do this in order to avoid any potential offense and all of that technical jazz for now and the future) **_

_**-O-0-o-0-O-**_

**CHAPTER 8: When You Lie in Your Bed and You Lie to Yourself**

-O-0-o-0-O-

_"__I hear what you want and I feel that way. I hear you fade away and I hear you crawl. I gave my life away and I feel no pain…"_

_-The Smashing Pumpkins, 'Silverfuck'_

-O-0-o-0-O-

Violet didn't even know why her parents even bothered to have conversations without her anymore. They shouted loudly enough that she could hear every word from her room anyways.

She knew exactly what Vivien wanted. What Ben wanted.

What about what she wanted?

What about poor broken Violet? Poster child for the suicide hotlines, independent-not-by-choice-but-by-choice-as-well. Where was her vote in all of this? Surely, not every ballot in the box was labeled 'Vivien' or 'Ben'. Was it?

She sat there on the windowsill, passing cigarettes back and forth along with light conversation. Nothing serious. No 'what about your parents?' or 'so, how did you die?'

But along came the Wicked Witch of Next Door, Constance, walking her little dog too.

It was as if the world grew still and no one could move but those two.

Her eyes grew wide and hopeful, her hand rising to clutch at her chest, as if she was attempting to give a physical reason for her emotional pain. Her spindly old legs stalled, stopping only to start again only to stop again. Like a windup toy with jammed gears and a dying battery.

Who knew? Maybe Little Miss Blanche Dubois's luck was running out, or maybe life was getting just a little too real.

And then she saw the expression on Tate's face.

It took every ounce of her self control to stifle the whimper of fear threatening to escape her mouth. Her teeth bit through the thin skin of her lip, drawing the pungent coating of salt and rust into her mouth that made her want to gag. Her nails did the same to her palms, her knuckles white from the pressure.

His eyebrows were so furrowed that she could hardly see the dark and heavy hate emanating from his eyes, rimmed in a weighty reminder of sleepless nights past. The shadows in his cheeks grew more defined. It was as if he'd aged ten years in an instant, and in a bad way. His complexion turned to wax and purple-blue-black bruises flowered across his left cheekbone, reaching _down, down, down_ to his jaw. Thin scratches painted themselves at random intervals. One ran from the corner of his right eye. Another from the left side of his nose down the crease that should've appeared when he smiled. The same side's mouth corner suffered the same fate. More still-healing scabs on the opposite.

It was when the blood started pouring that her self control_ (what little modicum she had of it anyways)_ shattered.

Gushing from-from-from…

_Oh god, it's __**everywhere…**_

A black-red syrup of bodily fluid, dripping from the whites of his eyes, dyeing the sclera a sickly shade of crimson. Pouring from both of his flared nostrils to fall over a set of snarling blue lips. Rivulets weeping from between his gnashing teeth.

Tate was dead, and there was no denying it.

Just when she thought she could forget that, he came back with the Mother of All Post-It Reminders.

Wrenching her gaze away from the confirmed walking corpse, Violet turned back to look at Constance.

This was the end, wasn't it? The woman would go insane trying to prove that what she had seen was in fact real. She would go crazy trying to prove that she wasn't.

But as the color drained from her bottled tan, she allowed herself only a moment before she squared her shoulders, slipped her usual mask of ancient elegant disdain back into place and carried on, a tremor in the hand holding her pet's lead.

It was then that Violet slipped.

A quiet squeak emerged from her bleeding lips, still open from when her jaw was left hanging.

The cigarette she'd been taking deep pulls from finally burned away, singing her limp fingers. The scent of bubbling human flesh permeated the air along with the heavy musk of coppery salt.

But she did nothing to stop the pain she couldn't feel anymore.

_Shock? Fear? _

_Or have I just lost my mind?_

It was then that Tate seemed to finally recover from his state of immobile rage, his snow-cold fingers, no more than sticks dipped in wax probing at hers, feeling the burn with dead hands.

"Violet."

His voice was no more than a heavy rasp as he seemed to shake with every lungful of air he pulled in. _Not that he needs it. Not anymore._

"Look at me."

She turned her head but her stare remained firmly fixed on their intertwined fingers. She wouldn't look up. She wouldn't.

_"__Look at me."_

This was the part she hated the most. The way that she couldn't ever possibly refuse him. Not when he sounded so tired, so broken.

But this time, there was an undercurrent that was almost tangible. An underbelly of white-hot anger. Not directed at her, that much she knew, but how little would it take for that rage to be turned on her?

She glimpsed him angry once before. And she'd run like some coward.

_Actually, come to think of it, it was because you were running that he was so mad. Because he knows that he's a monster. And he wants you to know that he knows. And there's nothing. You. Can. Do. _

_Shut up. _

_Shut up._

**_Shut up!_**

Violet looked up.

Tate was still dead.

That would never change, she knew, but he still looked it. He'd never looked it before.

It made her wonder even more how he died. It was quite obvious that it was violent. But not obvious enough that she could tell at a glance what the cause of death was. It wasn't like she could go asking either. It seemed far too personal a matter to be divulged on a whim.

His lips were blue. Thick blood everywhere. Bruises. Cuts.

"Do you see this? This is what happens when you try to leave the house. _This is what happened when I tried to leave._"

Tate knew exactly what he was doing from the moment Constance left his sight. Of course, while she was present, he'd had absolutely no control over his emotions or, god forbid, his appearance.

His mother always did bring out the worst in him.

The best part of that however, was how easy it was for him to remind her of every mistake she'd ever made with a single glance. He was the memory of Hugo. He was the Prodigal Son. He was every insecurity she'd ever had wrapped up in the most painfully perfect package.

'_Her angel'_, she'd called him.

Of course, Lucifer was the most beautiful and dedicated angel of them all.

But he fell, tumbling down to Earth, all because he'd loved too much. And in the hearts of righteous and meek, such emotion is the greatest sin of all.

Tate was a sinner. His life paralleled that of the original betrayal, which, if you looked closely, was not a betrayal at all.

It's always just a matter of perspective.

He figured that a bit of twisting the truth to his advantage in order to ensure Violet's stay here was extended despite her parents' unease with the history of this house.

To be completely honest, they were right. Murder House was poison. It called for the blood of innocents and sinners alike, reveling in the destruction and pain that its walls contained with an air-tight and silent seal. If it was to reveal its true nature to all those that entered, the floors would be stained and the chandeliers dripping with reminders of the past and the suffering to come.

Even so, he needed Violet more than he could say. He had no words to describe the full extent of his utter need for her.

So he made some up to fill in the blanks and create and insurance policy for her residency.

_What better motivator than fear? _

"I tried to leave. I tried to get out of here for good. Look at what happened to me", he rasped through his swollen throat and the blood flowing up from his lungs and his kidneys and liver and stomach and everything else in the human body that could rupture and turn to mush.

"_Look at what happened to me._"

Violet's gaze never wavered, but the corners of her eyes began to leak what appeared to be involuntary tears, her split lip trembling as she watched his dead fingers rise to caress her cheek.

"I don't want you hurt like me, Violet. I want you safe. You have to stay here. Not for me. _For you._"

He wasn't completely speaking out of his ass. He really did want her safe.

Safe where he could watch her every move and fight away the other monsters lurking behind every corner so he could be the only one who knew when she was sleeping, when she was awake, when she was good and when she was bad.

_Slow down there, Santa Claus. Christmas isn't for another two months. The department stores have only been playing carols for five weeks._

"Will-will… will I be safe if I stay?"

It took her a couple of seconds to be able to keep her voice from shaking as she spoke. She was drawing on every little bit of inner strength she possessed.

_You were just told that you'll die if you leave. And it's almost certain that Vivien and Ben won't give you the option of living. Of course, they don't know that, but that doesn't matter. _

And then she remembered Addie. Poor Addie.

_"__You're gonna die in here."_

"Will I be safe if I stay?"

The reminder of what that hauntingly innocent and honest woman had said reminded her of how important it was to know every detail of what people in this house said. Every possible loophole and chance to be taken whenever you placed your blind trust in dead things.

"I can't promise that."

With that, Tate reverted to his usual appearance. "But I can promise that you'll have a fighting chance. As long as I'm around, I can promise you that."

_"__I promise you only one thing. I won't make any promises." _

She realized in that moment that he only spoke twisted versions of what she didn't want to hear. And he made them sound like everything she wanted was everything she didn't.

He was smart, she would give him that.

_He knows that you'll do almost anything he asks of you. He knows that you'll swallow any sweet lie he feeds you without the usual grain of salt. _

_You're his puppet, and you know it._

_You just don't want to admit that he has that much control over you._

_At least, not yet._

"Okay."

It escaped before she even realized that she had opened her mouth to speak.

"I'll stay."

-O-0-o-0-O-

Vivien had discovered the origins of the house.

And apparently, it wasn't all that great for the family-adhesive fetus. She'd experienced a rather extreme case of spotting. In white pants, nonetheless.

_Talk about unlucky._

And Ben had continued to disappoint. This time, he'd claimed that the matronly old maid, Moira, was trying to seduce him. He called for her resignation. She'd retaliated with the threat of suing for sexual harassment unless if they let her keep her job.

_Score one for the housekeeper. 'Attempted seduction', my ass. What did she do? Tickle him with a feather duster?_

It sickened her to even believe for a single moment that the man who had aided in her conception was so desperate for another woman that he would attempt to hit on an innocent old woman who was clearly in her sixties.

Sure, maybe at one point way, way back, she'd probably been a knockout.

_Poor Moira. She probably received a lot of unwanted attention from male clients in particular back in the day. _

_This wasn't her first time at the rodeo._

At least for now, Violet had discovered that they wouldn't move. Not until they sold the house, that is. And with the whole city aware of the goings-on on the property, that wasn't any time in the near-future.

The only person who'd come to visit the open house was dead, according to Tate and judging by the injury she'd glimpsed on the back of her head from the upstairs landing.

She really had to listen in on her parents' affairs more often.

_Tate really is rubbing off on me. _

_Does that make me impressionable, or does that just make him even more manipulative than I could anticipate?_

She was scared to know the answer to that question.

_But you already do…_

-O-0-o-0-O-

Constance was digging a grave.

Her bony wrinkled hands shook with the exertion required to move shovelful after shovelful of dirt. She paused every once in a while to wipe at her forehead, her makeup running.

Moira watched on from an upstairs window as her bones were exposed to air for the first time in thirty-five years.

"Oh god", she whimpered, allowing herself to weep for the first time in almost as long.

Tate appeared out of nothing, wrapping his arms around her shaking shoulders. He let her rest her head on his shoulder, stroking her fading red hair.

The woman hadn't deserved anything she'd suffered, especially not at the hands of his parents. One mistake didn't make her a bad person. He should know, he was one.

Constance dragged the corpse of a young woman into the hole, dumping her unceremoniously over Moira's decayed body. The hole was then filled again.

She left and Ben arrived a few moments later, dragging a wheelbarrow filled with cement and tools to install and spread it. He set up a perimeter to cover the grave and began pouring it, smoothing it until the cement was level.

Moira's sobs grew louder and Tate continued to hold her.

She would never leave now.

None of them would.

-O-0-o-0-O-

_**Righty then. **_

_**So, I do mention religion in this story (it will be brief, but I still feel obligated to say that...) and I would like to make it clear that these references and opinions are only made in order to illustrate the characters and are not necessarily my personal views. I would also like to state that though I do not practice religion, I do respect the beliefs of others and their right to practice their faith. **_

_**On another note, I have now graduated :D**_

_**This means no more high school (YES!), so more time to write. **_

_**Speaking of which, I DO have another chapter written. This is in fact a first. I generally tend to sort of write bits throughout the week and only post the moment I finish. I might post it sooner or later depending on how much feedback I get on this chapter (HINT HINT) (I kid) (No, I don't). **_

_**And allow me to rant about my personal life for just a moment; I recently had my prom, and while it was in fact quite fun, the after-party was slightly... less so. If any of you have ever been the only sober person in a room of drunk/tipsy people, I feel for you. I feel for you so hard D:**_

_**On to the usual thank yous:**_

_**Readers: You guys rock. Don't ever change. (REFERENCEEEEEE) **_

_**Favorites/Alerts: Always appreciated and treasured forever in my heart.**_

_**Reviews: EVEN THOUGH I HAVE HEARD BACK FROM MANY OF YOU ON THE POSSIBLE M SCENE, I AM STILL OPEN TO OPINIONS. Just sayin'.**_

_**rko-luver: Thanks for the feedback :)**_

_**jandjsalmon: WONDERFUL WALTER, Iron Man, thanks, but can I pleasepleaseplease have your opinion for the M-ness? :3**_

_**vixenXfreezepop: I love your long reviews. They give me moar of the stuff to work with as in what you particularly enjoyed or what you want to see. And yes. Yes, I did have to ask. ;)**_

_**Sarah v: Yay :D Thanks for continuing to give me feedback and don't be ashamed to tell me if there's anything I should change or improve on :D **_

_**Demy: Thank you so much, and don't worry, I'll keep on powering through this story xD Better late than never, and don't worry, there's a lot more to come and your compliments have brought joy and happiness to my heart (no, seriously. And I'd say you brought joy and happiness to my soul, but everyone knows that gingers don't have souls ;D) **_

_**That does it for today. Bye for now,**_

_**Merida**_


	10. Chapter 9: Girl

_**Don't own. Won't own it. Can't own it. You guys all know the drill. **_

**CHAPTER 9: Scrawling Her Name Upon the Ceiling**

-O-0-o-0-O-

_"__Fist pounding on a vending machine, toy diamond stuck on her finger. With a noose she can hang from the Sun and put it out with her dark sunglasses; walking crooked down the beach, she spits on the sand where the bones are bleaching…"_

_-Beck, 'Girl'_

-O-0-o-0-O-

"Tate, when I told you that I couldn't see you anymore, I referred you to another psychiatrist."

_Here we go again. Sigmund Freud here thinks he can tell me to do what he wants. _

_Didn't he get the message last time? Or any of the times before that?_

"You never showed for the first appointment and you didn't even call to cancel."

God, he went on as if what most people would consider just plain old bad manners was symptomatic of his eminent mental breakdown and resulting violent reaction.

_Been there, done that. Now give me something I can work with, doc._

"I told you, I won't see anyone but you."

His clasped hands propped up on his knees kept the smirk from showing. He was going to have to pull out the crocodile tears and empty promises, wasn't he?

"Look, Tate, we've already discussed why that won't work for me. My daughter is involved with you against my better judgment and that implicates you in my personal life. I can't treat anyone I know personally outside of my office."

He was going to have to pull out the crocodile tears and empty promises.

"I can't see anyone else. You're the only one I can trust", he sobbed, the sleeves of his shirt pulled high on his hands as he rubbed at his eyes.

"I've already told you, I can't see you. Not in this house."

_Go in for the kill._

_Not literally, psycho. Figuratively. Got that?_

Tate made firm eye contact, his gaze steady yet timid. He'd mastered the expression over the years of useless therapy and fucking around with misguided do-gooders with degrees hanging from their walls.

Ben sighed. "I've got an opening. I'll meet you somewhere outside. But you have to stay away from my daughter."

"I promise! I promise", Tate responded in a desperate tone. The killer that lay just beneath the surface of his vulnerable front smiled. _Hook, line and sinker._

"No more weird shit."

You didn't screw with the women of the Murder House. Not Nora, not Moira, not Gladys and not Maria.

Ben was going to learn that. The hard way.

-O-0-o-0-O-

Morgan-Mary-Macy's fluffers had arrived.

Violet had never seen so much flamboyance in one room. She figured it would be easier to hide upstairs than to get involved with the whole 'fluffing' scene. She'd never been all that great at pumpkin carving and she sucked at putting up decorations. Besides, she had Tate to worry about.

Sighing, she stared at herself in the mirror, brushing the hair away from her face like he preferred.

_Your nose is too big,_ whispered the voice in her head.

_Your hair has no volume. You have a zit on your chin. You could stand to lose a few pounds._

She bit her broken lip, wincing as her teeth made contact with the scab.

She'd lived with these insecurities for most of her teenage life, her mind poking at the defenses around her self-esteem until they crumbled and she was no more than a mess of hormones and unfounded fears.

_Every girl gets this_, she told herself.

_Oh, if only you really believed that. And if you really thought you were beautiful._

She spun around when she heard a creak from the general area of her bed, approaching it cautiously. She began to lean down.

You could never be too careful in a house full of dead things.

The hand that shot out and grabbed her foot was unexpected, and the person who crawled out from amid the dust bunnies and long-lost socks was even more so.

Violet would have guessed that it was a certain dead male someone who just so happened to make her weak in the knees and desperate for affection.

_You're pathetic. Hoping that the guy you have a really complicated relationship with on a good day would spontaneously appear just to sweep you off your feet and make you feel better about yourself. Sad._

"Trick or treat, smell my feet", sang Addie, pulling herself upright. "Give me something good to eat."

"Addie", Violet exclaimed. Her face was twisted into an expression of surprise mingled with confusion.

"I want to be a pretty girl for Halloween", stated the woman. Her smile was so radiant that Violet couldn't even bring herself to mind that she'd been lurking about uninvited in her room.

"What?"

"I want to be a pretty girl", Addie repeated. "Like you, Violet."

The words went a long way to bolster her floundering ego.

But then she felt guilty, knowing all too well that Addie had likely grown up with Constance telling her every day that she was ugly. How could she be so selfish as to allow herself to think of only how she felt when this woman had experienced countless insults from the very person who'd raised her?

Smiling, she dug around in her dresser, retrieving the boxes of eye shadow and some mascara and eyeliner she'd received as a gift from her Aunt Jo a few years back. She only used the mascara, and she hadn't even opened the eye shadow yet.

She considered offering it as a present to Addie but then imagined how horribly Constance would treat her if she believed that her daughter was gaining the idea that she could be beautiful too.

_Makeup isn't to put on a show for other people, _she'd decided. _It's to make us feel better when we look in the mirror. That's where true beauty comes from. Confidence. _

Twisting her hair into a bun, she got to work on applying pink lipstick and blush to her neighbor's face.

"I'm not too good at this", she warned Addie, brushing a pale blue over her eyelids.

"I don't care", she'd replied in a rush of words, craning her neck to glance into the mirror that Violet kept on her dresser. "I like it."

Violet furrowed her brow in concentration as she gently moved Addie's face back into position so she could finish. "Close your eyes."

She continued to paint powder into the crease of her eyelid. "So how old are you Addie?"

"A lady never reveals her age", the woman replied, holding up a single index finger to make her point.

Violet nodded silently, picking up the mascara.

"Is Tate your boyfriend?"

The question was hesitant, and it surprised her a bit. "You know Tate?"

Addie gave a small smile as if she knew a secret. "I talk to him sometimes when he comes for his head shrinking. He likes you. I can tell."

It was easy to discern the joy in her voice, and Violet allowed herself to grin a bit.

"He thinks you're a pretty girl."

Violet's grin grew wider and she applied some more color to the apples of the older woman's cheeks.

"Are you a virgin?"

_Now __that's__ a rather bold question._

"Y-yes..." she admitted, hoping that her cheeks didn't redden to the same shade Addie's were at that moment. "Aren't you?"

_Be bold right in return. That's it. Don't be afraid. _

_I wonder if Tate is a virgin too..._

_No, Violet! Bad Violet!_

_He's dead, you sicko. Ew._

"Hell no", Addie replied with a tangible measure of pride.

"You can't keep breaking into our house, Addie", Violet said suddenly, thinking of all of the horrible things that hid in the dark. The poor woman would probably be drawn into a trap, as trusting as she was. "It's dangerous."

"But my friends are here!" Addie replied loudly, making no attempt to deny the last part of Violet's warning. She then turned to look at herself in the mirror again, seeing how Violet had parted her bangs in a slightly more mature fashion. "Wow! Violet, I look beautiful!"

The wonder in her tone made a smile grow on Violet's broken lips as she continued to brush her hair.

_Maybe I'll have another friend here after all_, she thought.

She looked over at the chalkboard with the unabashed capital letters spelled 'TAINT' proudly.

_One that isn't so toxic._

-O-0-o-0-O-

Violet glanced at the clock, whose bright red numerals read '12:00'.

Addie had left a few hours before, bursting with newfound confidence and after having found a new friendship in her neighbor. Their conversation had made Violet feel slightly better about herself and had inspired a huge rise in self-esteem for Addie.

"Tate", she called, her voice soft. "You said you would come by at midnight…"

Looking around, she saw no one else present in her room.

"Come out, come out wherever you are…"

A rough hand reached around her from behind and stifled her cry of shock as she felt his presence behind her. This time, he was warm and comforting, not the cold, detached person he'd been a few days ago.

He began to chuckle, releasing her from his hold after a quick kiss pressed to her temple.

"I didn't scare you?"

The question was designed to tease. He wasn't serious in the least. She decided to play along.

"No, of course not." A smirk slipped onto her face.

Thanks to Addie, she'd found the courage to pull her hair back into a twist instead of opting to keep it loose in order to hide behind it like she usually did.

In a single instant and with no more than a sentence, all of that bravery turned to dust.

"I bet I can."

-O-0-o-0-O-

Lighting a candle, Tate pulled out an old dusty board left over from his living days.

They'd made their way down to the basement, Violet not without a small measure of apprehension. He'd promised not to allow Thaddeus to leave his small niche in the back room, so she'd hesitantly followed but remained wary. She didn't want a repeat of last week.

"Come on, humor me", he joked, trying to convince Violet to place her hands on the small plastic cursor used in the game. Rolling her eyes, she plopped down opposite him and allowed him to grab her and place her fingers onto the smooth surface of the indicator.

"Nora?" he called. "Nora, I know you're here. I have someone I want you to meet."

Violet stilled, her hands beginning to tremble.

Why did he want her to see the woman who'd started it all? Why did he want her to get to know the origin of Murder House?

The way ghosts materialized here wasn't like they showed in the movies or on TV. They did fade in or appear in a flash of light. It was as if they just weren't there and then they were. As if they'd just blinked into existence at that very spot.

She was beautiful. Violet hadn't noticed that when she'd been eavesdropping on her "tour" of the house. No, she'd been too fixated on the hole in the back of her head.

Her blond hair was pinned away from her oval face in an orderly bun, a curl or two having escaped. She was draped in a heavy shawl and wore dark clothes. She was clearly in mourning, but Violet wasn't certain if it was over her son or her husband.

"Hello."

Her voice was soft and sad, but Violet knew all too well form the stories Tate had told her that there was an underlying strength there that wasn't visible at first.

"It's so nice to meet you." Nora smiled wanly, her face drawn and pale. Probably over the fact that yet another family had moved into her house. That another family had doomed itself to its curse.

"Y-you too", Violet replied, stumbling over her words. "I'm Violet. You met my mother already."

"Yes", the other woman replied, her voice vague as if she was wandering through a dream. "Lovely. You were right, Tate."

He smiled at her, his face alight with satisfaction. "I know."

"I'll leave you two alone now", Nora said, smiling one last time. "So lovely to meet you."

And then she blinked out of existence.

"Why did you want me to meet her?" Violet asked, turning to face Tate once more. This was confusing. Who was this woman to him?

"She's my mother."

-O-0-o-0-O-

_**I really do need to update more often. At least, I say that but I know that I probably won't. **_

_**It's been decided (thanks to you awesome people :D) that the M scene shall in fact take place. I have a rough idea of when it will but I won't know for sure until I know how it'll fit. **_

_**But it'll be in the near future, so no worries ;D**_

_**Readers: I love you people. What else can I say?**_

_**Favorites/Alerts: Wonderful feels you provide me with in deeming me worthy of your attention and continued readership warm my heart. Thank you.**_

_**Reviews:**_

_**MrsTateLangdon: I know the feeling xD The whole 'Ginger' joke never really seems to get old :) Thanks for your feedback and I hope this update brings you joy :D**_

_**jandjsalmon: No problemo, Iron Man :D and I promise, it won't lead to the story losing all semblance of a plot :P I swear it upon Tate's wicknedness ;)**_

_**Righty. I'm done for now. Got things to do (yeah right). Got shows to watch. **_

_**Merida, out.**_


	11. Chapter 10: Shake Me Down

I Don't Hate Mondays

_**-Insert generic 'I-don't-own-this'- PLEASE SEE AUTHOR'S NOTE**_

-O-0-o-0-O-

CHAPTER 10: Taste the Blood, Broken Dreams; Lonely Times Indeed

-O-0-o-0-O-

"In my life I have seen people walking to the sea just to find memories plagued by constant misery, their eyes cast down; fixed upon the ground…"

-Cage the Elephant, 'Shake Me Down'

-O-0-o-0-O-

Violet was certain that her jaw had dropped in an almost cartoonish manner when those words left Tate's lips. She felt incredibly tempted to lift her hand to snap her mouth shut.

But that's impossible. She died in the 1920s for Christ's sake! And he told me he died in '94.

There is absolutely no way in hell that him being her child is possible… besides, isn't Thaddeus their kid?

Does this mean that he's even more of a cradle robber than I thought? Is he really an old man? Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god…

"Well, she's not really my mother", Tate continued, scratching his head a bit. "She just took care of me while I was a kid and I was living here for the first time. Without her, I would've gone off the deep end way sooner than I did."

She breathed a deep sigh of relief, her racing heart and thoughts returning to their usual calm rate.

Well, he's still an older man technically. At least he's not old enough to be my great-grandfather.

That's not too comforting, silly girl, hissed the voice in the back of her mind. And he's got all of those other little problems for you to deal with. He's crazy. He's violent. He's manipulative. He's dead.

Dead.

"I told you to stop fucking with me", Violet huffed, shoving playfully at his shoulder, ignoring the whispers in her head. "You had me worried for a minute there."

He laughed, ruffling his hair while he rubbed at the back of his neck.

"Okay, okay, I'll lay off."

He looked back into her eyes.

"Would you like to go someplace with me tomorrow night? I have something I want to show you."

'"I thought you couldn't leave the house once you'd died."

This entire conversation was just a mess of confusion to Violet. It was one contradiction of fact after the other.

"Oh, Violet", he replied, laughing, eyes swimming with mischief more so than usual. "You should know better by now. There's always a way out."

"You might not like it, but it's always there", Tate continued. "It just so happens that my way out only last as long as Halloween does."

So the dead things from the House are allowed to run free for All Hallow's Eve. Interesting. And pretty much exactly like something out of a popular TV show.

Couldn't it be some more random date, like the fifteenth of March, or the third of July?

Really. Whoever came up with this whole concept could use a little deviation from the usual ghost stories.

Using every bit of her self-control to resist the almost necessary need to roll her eyes, she gave a single nod. "Fine. What did you have in mind?"

"I have something important to show you."

He looked like Christian Slater in his glory days of cult movies and too much hairspray, before the receding hairline and DUIs. The sly smile that started like a fox's grin. The promise of a revolution in a single expression.

He was Mark Hunter, inciting the masses to rise up and dance to the tune of their own rebellion while he plucked their strings as puppet master of a new generation of free thinkers.

He was J.D., the closest chaos could come to physical form in the body of a teenage boy, bewitching and twisting his way through life, dependent on the existence of anarchy and destruction.

He was Daniel Molloy, the embodiment of fleeting humanity's desperate struggle for immortality, willing to sacrifice anything to be remembered, if only for a moment.

Vivien and her refusal to watch anything released post 1999 has changed me way too much. Whether it's for better or for worse has yet to be determined…

Violet offered him her most devious smirk in return. "And what would that be?"

"I can't tell you", he leaned in close, his eyes locked onto her own. He could see the questions that lay behind them, but he was selfish and refused to give in. She was just as bad- she indulged his stubborn greed.

Tate smirked, those pale lips of his twisting into his absolutely favorite expression before swooping a scant few inches to capture Violet's own. It had become an almost practiced movement over the past few weeks that they had existed in this together-apart.

She knew better than to expect commitment from someone whose moods and actions were so frantic and scattered, let alone someone who had been caught in a state of limbo for the past two decades. Besides, she knew all too well the consequences of being roped into a serious relationship at her age. She'd overheard all too many giggling conversations consisting of little more than "So, last night I FINALLY hooked up with So-and-So at that party at That One Kid's house…"

It reminded her of her previous conversation with sweet innocent Addie, who could claim that she was far from virginal without even batting an eye.

Violet was then jolted out of her thoughts by the smooth caress of Tate's tongue against her lips. She could feel the blood pounding in her face as she attempted to wrestle her more inappropriate thoughts into submission without much success (his tongue was really, really distracting, okay?).

Besides, the lack of a label placed upon their- could she even call what they did a relationship? Pretty much all that went on between them was a bit of conversation, some kissing and a lot of confusion and fear. Not a solid base for a great love story.

Back to the point (god, he was way too good at this for her to focus properly), this way, she could live with plausible deniability both for Ben and her sakes. She didn't have to face the fact that here she was, playing Seven Minutes in Heaven with an apparition- he really did play that game too well- or confess that she was seeing her father's most disturbed patient romantically.

It was when Tate's hands began to wander that Violet allowed her busy head to take a brief vacation from all of that self-realization.

He wasn't going for her chest or anything- she almost sighed in disappointment at that- but his fingers were moving at her stomach in some attempt to caress or-

Shrieking with laughter, she broke away from him, twisting in an effort to escape his touch.

"Stop it Tate! I'm ticklish!" she finally managed, gasping words between spurts of tittering giggles. He only renewed his assault with vigor, stopping only when she pleaded for mercy. They both collapsed onto the ground, breathing heavily, for once not simply out of breath from kissing.

They lay on the cold, pitted concrete, ignoring the dust and dirt, his hand in her once-tied up hair, now tangled in a mess, her head resting on the hollow between his shoulder and his chest. It seemed to stretch on forever as they remained silent; her hand placed against his unbeating heart while he fixed his gaze on the wooden beams dressed in cobwebs that composed the ceiling.

It would've been a sweet, romantic moment, but it wasn't. It couldn't be. Not while she stared in awed horror at his unmoving chest and he dreamt of guns left to rust under a floorboard with his eyes still wide open.

His mind wandered back to the day he died, the guilt rising in his throat like heavy, bitter bile drug deep from the dark corners of his mind.

But should you even really feel guilty, psycho? You wimp. You pussy. You didn't even go through with it in the end. Maybe that's why you feel guilty. You feel guilty that not-so-deep-down, you still wanna do it.

Go on, psycho. Make my nonexistence.

He grit his teeth and bit down on a soft, fleshy bit of pink from inside of his mouth in a superhuman effort not to scream in frustrated desperation.

I swear to god, if I could blow my brains out and stay dead for once, I'd do, just so I wouldn't have to deal with the fucking reminder of every wrong thing I've ever done being rehashed every five seconds.

Inhaling the musty air of the basement and allowing it to trickle from the exposed thin gaps between his teeth, he willed himself into not lunging for the first relatively sharp object within proximity and subsequently carving the voice out of his head.

Their fragile almost nonexistent illusion of peace shattered like a stained glass mural being broken by an uncaring bare fist. A red ball rolled into view.

Violet sat up abruptly, not even bothering to cry out in pain as Tate's hand took too long to disentangle itself from her locks, pulling at the roots of her hair. Ice raced through her veins for a fleeting second before she remembered that she was here with Tate. Nothing could hurt her when he was around. Nothing but him.

"Hey, Thaddeus", he mumbled in a rough-sounding voice, reaching one long arm out to roll the ball right back to where it came from. There was no verbal response, as usual; only the ball rolling back towards them.

"Look, I'll come find you tomorrow and you'll get your surprise", Tate said quietly, trying with all of his self-control to restrain the heavy thoughts he'd been having not moments ago. He needed Violet to be kept safely apart from that part of himself.

To his immense relief, she nodded, pulling herself to her feet before he could rise and offer his hand as he always did.

"See you soon", Violet whispered, pressing her mouth to his yet again in farewell, their kiss little more than a peck. Then, she waved wearily towards the shadowed doorway she knew Nora's child hid, eagerly awaiting the return of his toy and turned, quietly making her way up the stairs, pausing only to wince at the creak of a wooden step.

Once she returned to her room, Violet glanced at the alarm clock by her bed, the numbers boasting '5:47', as if it was proud that she would only have an hour and a half of sleep at best, flopping down on her back onto her mattress.

Her fingers reached up, pressing delicately against her lips.

She could still taste his blood on her tongue.

-O-0-o-0-O-

Ben had lit himself a cigarette as Tate, in an act of uncommon benevolence, brought the coffee that he had purchased for the both of them with the five dollar bill he had found between the cushions of the living room couch. Hypocrite. Giving your daughter shit for something that you do too.

"Wow", he said with a hint of disgust, sitting down. "There're so many flavors. I don't even know what half of them are."

Of course he didn't know. He hadn't gone out to buy coffee in over two decades. Besides, it wasn't like he would ever want a 'venti half-caff double espresso shot mocha latte with soy and no whip' like the woman in an unflattering hot pink sweat suit two spots ahead of him in the line ordered. Consumer-tailored overpriced crap.

He then looked up, noticing how Ben seemed to be fixated on a little girl in a witch costume. With a wry grin, he commented, "She reminds you of Violet, doesn't she?"

Smoke obscured his view a little before clearing, having escaped from Ben's nostrils. He appeared to be caught up in some distant memory of a simpler life; a life before he fucked everything (and that student of his) up. "She always had to be scary. My fierce little girl."

Yeah, sure Freud, reminisce about the daughter whose life you basically ruined and hope that deep down inside, she doesn't hate you nearly as much as you know you should hate yourself.

Tate smiled to himself. Not Ben's 'fierce little girl'. His fearless beautiful woman.

He ignored him as he continued on, spouting some sentimental crap about his wife and how different Violet was that probably wasn't worth shit in the end.

"The thing is, I was a troubled kid too. Like you, Tate. I didn't hold out too much hope for myself. Not many other people did either. It was a total shock to everyone, including myself when I became a doctor. But somehow, I was given this… amazing gift of family."

He looked ready to cry as he took a final drag from his half-finished cigarette, throwing the rest away carelessly to the side.

Tate opened his mouth, ready to tell him that no, he was not like him at all; that hope was all too foreign a concept for him to grasp, let alone hold out for. He wanted to hiss venomous words and say that he didn't have a future, there was no room for 'what do I want to be when I get older'. He'd decided that for himself seventeen years ago as he loaded his guns and sat there in wait of the end. He wanted to tell him that he'd had a family; one so fucked up that they'd offed his brother and father in cold blood and left him to rot with his stagnant thoughts of mass homicide and flashy suicide.

But instead, he reached out, placing a hand on Harmon's wrist, wincing internally as he did so. The last thing he felt like doing was consoling the man who had made his Violet so unhappy and felt the need to poke and prod at his own still-healing wounds.

"It's going to be okay, Doc."

"I-I'm sorry, Tate." The following 'Oh God' was breathed out as he wiped away a tear.

Geezus. This is worse than some soap opera on crack. It makes me want to die all over again.

With a rattling sigh, Harmon pressed his hands to his face and then let them fall. Taking a sip of his lukewarm coffee, he looked straight into Tate's eyes, a feat he wouldn't ever have done on any other day.

"So, how are you feeling today?"

-O-0-o-0-O-

Her parents were fighting again.

Usually, she'd just huff, stick in her earphones and lose herself in the music, but today was different.

Today, she could hear them over the mellow sound of Billy Corgan's voice. Today, they were arguing again, and Ben was producing nothing more than lie after lie. Today, Vivien had taken the initiative and called him on his bullshit. Today, she was done taking his crap.

Then, silence.

It lasted a grand total of ten minutes before Violet heard more shouting and something breaking. But it was when Vivien started screaming that she dropped everything and rushed down the stairs, a flash of fear that yet another murder-cult break in was occurring.

As she paused halfway down the stairs, she realized that it was that god-forsaken baby that her parents had insisted on having despite the gruesome miscarriage only months before and the fact that it wasn't going to save anything, let alone their marriage. Besides, she'd heard her mother asking Ben to leave only moments before she doubled over in pain.

Violet asked the required 'what's going on?' to which Ben replied with the expected 'we're going to the hospital, don't open the door'.

Then they left, leaving her alone behind them, worried about the sprog that was slowly taking her place in their lives. One day, she would be blotted out of the family portrait they kept in the living room and their new little miracle would be photoshopped in.

She knew all too well that she should have long ago given up on caring. But that was the worst part. She couldn't help herself, and there wasn't anything she could do about it either. She would be forced to allow herself to fade away, becoming no better than the ghosts and tortured souls that roamed this house.

The hate in her had grown exponentially, and she no longer restrained herself to quietly resenting that fetus' existence. No, she could finally admit to herself that she hated the thing, and hoped that it didn't last the car trip to the L.A. General.

It was cruel, sure. It was twisted, of course. But it was true.

As Violet felt all of that burning resentment build up in her, she felt it all dissolve into self-loathing just as quickly. She wasn't their hope that their marriage would hold together. They left her alone, knowing all too well what she would do in their absence.

That was perhaps just as bad as her hate for her unborn sibling.

They knew that she hacked herself to pieces behind the unlocked bathroom door. How could they not? They just refused to acknowledge it; to acknowledge that she was tearing at the seams, a product of their toxic relationship and neglect. Hell, she came home with a split lip and cut eyebrow and they left her to patch herself up alone.

Alone.

Violet bolted for the bathroom. This time, she locked the door.

This time, she didn't want anyone stopping her. Not even a little bit.

-O-0-o-0-O-

_**I'm sorry that it's been so long, I've been battling a nasty case of writer's block with a spork. It wasn't very effective. **_

_**Anyways, I finally got my laptop (yes!) and transferred everything, so that means possibly more updates now :D But I also have college now, so that's an empty promise, so I won't make it. **_

_**To make up for having abandoned you all for so long, I can promise that the chapter that you dirty-minded people are all waiting for will come soon. Very soon. **_

_**Also, I wanted to ask this, because I don't know if it will bother any of you: **_

_**I have a habit of recycling bits of failed stories that I've given up on into my newer stories, and I was considering using a bit of something I wrote a few years ago in this one. The reason why I'm mentioning this is because I wrote that part when I was in a very dark place and it might be unsettling to some of you. **_

_**So, opinions on that?**_

_**Okay, down to the usual.**_

_**Readers: Love you, couldn't do this without you :D**_

_**Favorites/Alerts: Yes, I am alive! And I love you guys too xD Hope you like this chapter.**_

_**jandjsalmon: Thanks, I just felt that her role in Tate's childhood was kind of just passed over in the show after it was briefly introduced. I thought that Nora deserved a little more credit :P**_

_**That's all, folks (for now) **_

_**(sorry if you actually read the whole author's note, it was really long, but I needed those things said.)**_

_**Peace out,  
**_

_**Merida**_


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